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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23459491">One Way</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/4TSloid/pseuds/4TSloid'>4TSloid</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Metal Gear</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Sex, Bondage and Discipline, Gags, Light Angst, Light Dom/sub, Lingerie, M/M, Moving In Together, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Rough Sex, actually more angst than i thought, and one pretty pair of panties, sexual asphyxiation, that's robot pussy babe!!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:29:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>22,120</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23459491</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/4TSloid/pseuds/4TSloid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam had the uncanny ability to find the most embarrassing objects in anyone’s living quarters within hours of stepping inside. His arrival at Raiden’s apartment was no exception.</p><p>Or in other words, in which Sam gets nosy and Raiden gets princess-y.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Raiden/Samuel Rodrigues</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>99</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. silk and steel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>yknow how i said i had a samrai centric mulitchapter in store<br/>this isn't it.<br/>this one ran naked out of the oven out the back door and i had to catch it</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sam had the uncanny ability to find the most embarrassing objects in anyone’s living quarters within hours of stepping inside. His arrival at Raiden’s apartment was no exception. In fact, minutes after he arrived, smelling like months of beer and fast food and carrying the one garbage bag full of his belongings, he was quick to point out the glossy pink anomaly lying upon the covers on Raiden’s bed. Sam scooped the pillow up in his grubby hands and gave it an appraising look over. “Is this silk?” He asks.</p><p>“What’s it to ya?” Raiden asks back.</p><p>Sam wiggles his eyebrows, and rolls a fold of the lustrous fabric between his flesh fingers. “You wouldn’t have any... <em> plans </em> for this pillowcase, would you, <em> bonito </em>?”</p><p>“Yeah. I sleep on it.” Raiden snatches the pillow out of his hands. “Get your head out of your ass. Now I’m gonna have to wash this.”</p><p>“And just because a lowly peasant like me had the audacity to glance in its direction?”</p><p>“Because you’ve been sleeping in a shipping container and haven’t seen a working sink for an indeterminate period of time.”</p><p>“That much is true,” Sam says, turning now towards the bathroom. “If you’d allow me to use your shower, now, Your Highness.”</p><p>Raiden purses his lips. “I won’t stop you,” he says. “There’s extra towels in the cabinet under the sink. I’ll deal with your laundry.” </p><p>“Your Highness is ever gracious,” Sam replies, dropping his garbage bag filled with his garbage belongings by the bathroom door. He opens the door, but doesn’t proceed in.</p><p>Raiden looks up from the washing machine. “What?”</p><p>“I just thought Your Highness would like to join me.”</p><p>Sam’s quip is met with the biggest eye roll he’s ever seen. “Just fuck off and take your shower,” Raiden says. “And stop with the ‘Your Highness’ schtick.” Sam just waves and winks as he closes the bathroom door behind him.</p><p>Looking over a faded screen printed sweatshirt of Sam’s that read <em> 2004 World Judo Championships </em> across the front, Raiden knew that he would be climbing the walls before the week was over. The only thing he can hear for the next twenty minutes is Sam singing in the shower, sometimes in Portugese, sometimes in English. By the time laundry is underway, the water shuts off. It takes another ten minutes for Sam to stride outside in a bathrobe, <em> Raiden’s </em> bathrobe (which he absolutely did not give or even imply permission for Sam to use), and twirling a pair of handcuffs around his finger. “Looky look what I found, <em> bonito</em>,” he announces. “At the bottom of the vanity cupboard.”</p><p>Raiden marches right up to him and swipes at the cuffs. “Gimme that,” he says, but Sam holds them out of reach.</p><p>“Tell me this, at least, Blondie,” Sam says, smirking extra wide. “Do you, perhaps, have some… interests that I’m not aware of?”</p><p>“No,” Raiden barks, and reaches up further for the handcuffs, pressing himself chest to chest with Sam. He suddenly remembers that he’s probably-- no, <em> definitely </em> naked underneath the robe, which was not designed to fit Sam’s broader, deeper stature. His pectorals, metal and flesh, and the very top of the scar from where Raiden ran him through are exposed. Raiden takes a step back. Maybe it wasn’t worth snatching back those handcuffs after all. Maybe Sam would be stupid enough to cuff himself to a towel rod and save Raiden the headache of him roaming the house to find more objects he could use to accuse him of having kinks he didn’t. </p><p>“I had to kill a cop in the lobby of this complex once. I have his other equipment lying around the house elsewhere.” Raiden tries very hard to look Sam in the eye. It must seem contrived to him. “Besides. You never know when they’re going to come in handy.” </p><p>It doesn’t stop Sam’s smirk from spreading. “You never know when they’ll come in handy, hm?”</p><p>“Shut up. They’re just a thing I have. Everybody has random shit in their house.”</p><p>“I cannot recall the last time meeting a normal person who had a random pair of handcuffs in their house.”</p><p>“Well, I’m not just a normal person.” Raiden shifts, then points a finger at Sam. “And that’s my bathrobe.”</p><p>“Would you like me to take it off, then?”</p><p>He can feel his face heat up by a few degrees. “No!” Sam laughs and laughs. The next few weeks were going to do a number on Raiden’s blood pressure. “Son of a-- shut up. Just shut up.” He turns tail, and surrenders back to the couch with his blanket and his mug of chamomile tea he was in the middle of finishing before <em> somebody </em>so rudely interrupted. “Keep it. Keep the handcuffs, too. I don’t give a fuck what you do with them, just shut up for the night. At least until sunrise.” Sam mimes zipping his lips. “If you could do that one tiny little thing for me, I can guarantee you I won’t kill you here again.”</p><p>“Like you were so successful the first time,” Sam says, out of the side of his mouth.</p><p>“I said shut up!” Raiden stands out of his seat on the couch again. </p><p>Sam snickers again, and slips the handcuffs into one of the robe’s pockets as Jack kicks up his feet on the coffee table, lost in a video playing on his phone. He turns to peer inside Jack’s bedroom, but he speaks up again. “By the way, my room’s off limits.”</p><p><em> You must have something to hide, then </em> , Sam would say, but he holds his tongue. He doesn’t want to get Jack too worked up, lest he risk being kicked out of the apartment before his first night. “Go get changed,” Jack says. <em> So bossy </em> , Sam replies, in his mind. <em> I like it </em>. He changes into a tank top and a pair of sweatpants and reports back to Jack.</p><p>“It should go without saying you’re sleeping on the couch,” Jack says, from the kitchen now. “Wow, you’re actually following through with this ‘shutting up’ thing. And you haven’t tried to get into my room again. I’m impressed. You’re behaving well. But when it comes to you, the bar is on the floor.”</p><p>Sam smiles in his direction and takes his position on the couch. It’s still a little warm where Jack was sitting. The throw blankets on the couch even smell like Jack. Sam takes a deep breath into them before reclining fully. “Comfy?” Jack asks. Sam nods, yawns, takes his hair out of his ponytail. “Night,” Jack says, retreating into his bedroom. Sam waves goodnight.</p><p>The bedroom door clicks shut behind Jack. The autumnal evening chills the room, so another layer might be in order for Sam. He gets off the couch and rummages through his freshly-cleaned laundry for the only sweatshirt in his possession, but it’s mysteriously absent.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. smoke and mirrors</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next morning Sam awakens to a door clicking shut somewhere. The direction the sound came from indicates it would’ve sourced at the end of the hall, but all that’s there is the door to Jack’s room and the bathroom. Upon further investigation, Jack isn’t in the bathroom and the bedroom door is locked. The wall at the furthest end of the hall is covered by a full-length mirror. That’s the only remarkable thing about Jack’s abode, is that the whole place was full of mirrors. The apartment had little decoration to speak of save for the mirrors. There were even mirrors facing mirrors in the hallway, continuously reflecting the unending void between each other. It made Jack seem almost narcissistic, if one were to judge him solely by his living quarters. But then, if Sam looked like that,  he’d want to look at himself every day, too.</p><p>Sam knocks on the bedroom door and calls his name, but there’s no response. The lock on the door is the stupid dinky kind one can fiddle open with a nail file or a letter opener, though. Sam finds a nail file in the bathroom and takes a final scan of the apartment to make absolutely sure Jack wasn’t present. Then he opens the door.</p><p>The bedroom is sparsely decorated, painted white, and has a bed with room for two in the corner. The bedsheets and quilts are all white, too, save for the pink silk pillowcase from earlier. A file of paperwork from Ashnard Press and two laptops sit on the glass desk. Its accompanying chair has a very familiar sweatshirt draped over it; the sweater that his father got as a souvenir from the tournament a younger Sam got disqualified from after breaking another contestant’s neck. Sam puts it on. It smells like laundry soap. </p><p>The sliding closet doors, entire mirrors in and of themselves, have barely enough room to open before they scrape the bed. The hardwood floor feels colder under Sam’s feet now than it did in the living room. The room could use an area rug. All of Jack’s suits and outerwear hang in the closet, but some drawers obscuring other objects inspire Sam to get nosy. He pulls open the first drawer, which is full of scarves and ties. The second contains casual t-shirts. Sam closes it and puts his hand on the knob of the third drawer, but he hears a creak from outside. He glances over his shoulder and notices something else-- there was a window from Jack’s room into the living room. Sam recalls there being a mirror in the corresponding location on the exterior wall there, so it must be a one-way mirror. Sam pushes past a few of Jack’s suits to see that the back wall of his closet is a one-way mirror, too. The closet doors are one-way mirrors. If somebody were to sit inside, they could see both into the bedroom and outside in the hall without anyone knowing they were there. It makes sense, now, given Jack’s background, but Sam has more important things to attend to. He slides open the third drawer. It’s Jack’s underwear drawer. He has a SOCOM inside, surrounded by a score of bland grey, black, and white briefs. But it turns out the gun is hardly the most interesting thing in the drawer. </p><p>Sam digs through the pile, and one of the briefs reveals black lace around the waistband and leg holes. Upon closer inspection, it’s actually a bikini cut, and there’s tiny silk bows right in the front of each band. If he caught him, it would be too easy for Jack to claim that this foxy little number might belong to his wife, but she was living half a world away from Jack, and he had no other keepsakes of hers aside from a few photos framed on his desktop. Sam compares them in size to the rest of the underwear, and it’s a near-perfect match. There’s no tag or stamp in the back indicating it was mass-manufactured, which implies the pair could be custom-made. But it also seems there’s no, erm, accommodations in the crotch made for a certain, um, set of organs. Which could support Jack’s theoretical case. Sam debates taking them out and waving them around in front of Jack the next time he sees him, but he puts them back, buried underneath the rest of the bland undies and the SOCOM. He takes a moment to imagine taking those pretty panties off Jack with his teeth, stands, and reaches to close the closet doors. But a blur of movement from behind the one-way mirror sets Sam on edge. The doorknob twists, and Sam quickly stands.</p><p>Jack is naked. That is, unclothed and unarmoured, but with no trace of flesh save for the minimal swathes on his face. Between his legs is a smooth, sterile plate of fiberglass. A momentary expression of shock before anger sets in on Jack’s brow. “What,” he clenches his teeth, “are you doing in here.” It’s not a question, but a statement. Sam puts on a smirk.</p><p>“Thanks for giving me back my sweatshirt,” Sam replies, leaning against the wall like it was <em> his </em>room. “It was freezing last night. Could’ve used it.”</p><p>Jack’s eyes are not on him. “You were in the closet,” he says, another statement. “What were you looking for, more blackmail material?”</p><p>“No, just for this,” Sam says, giving the fading logo a tug. “I guess you are lending me this roof over my head, so you’re welcome to take--” he wiggles his eyebrows. “--Whatever you’d like from me.”</p><p>The surface of Jack’s body is foreign, but the shape it makes stirs Sam’s interest. Jack pinches the bridge of his nose. “Well, sorry.”</p><p>“An apology from you?” Sam says, shocked, as if he couldn’t hear the sarcasm rolling off Raiden’s words in beads. “Who are you and what did you do with Jack?”</p><p>“If you needed to stay warm so badly, you could’ve just turned up the thermostat,” Jack says. “Or worn a shirt with sleeves.”</p><p>“That is out of the question. This is my only shirt with sleeves. The world needs to see my guns under all other circumstances.”</p><p>Jack pushes past him into the bedroom. Sam’s mind starts boggling at the possible reasons why Jack would need this sweatshirt-- he was a full cyborg, possibly capable of regulating his own temperature; and he had other sweatshirts alongside the t-shirts in the second drawer. Hell, Jack was even wearing a sweatshirt on the day Sam arrived. “Not like you’ll have to worry about me taking it again,” Jack says, as if to confirm his suspicions. “I couldn’t stand wearing it after twenty seconds. It just reminded me that your ass is here.”</p><p>“Of course,” Sam replies, as Jack sifts through his belongings in the closet that Sam really should’ve thought of closing before he arrived. “I am here to cause you problems on purpose.” Jack doesn’t reply for a moment, looking through everything hanging before heading to the drawers. He spends an extra second examining the underwear drawer as Sam wanders closer.</p><p>“What did you take,” Jack asks, or states.</p><p>“You’re trying to get me to self-incriminate,” Sam says, waggling a finger. “I know all your tricks.”</p><p>“Answer the goddamn question. What did you take.”</p><p>“Nothing. Nothing from the closet.” Sam puts his hands up in surrender. But now, Jack does something that throws him for a loop: he claps his hands over Sam’s shoulders. </p><p>Sam freezes. Jack moves down, feeling up the crooks of his elbows and the bulk of his sleeves near the cuff, paying special attention to the unorthodox planes of his right arm. “Getting a little frisky, are we--”</p><p>“Shut!” Jack snaps. “Up!” A fleck of his spit flies in Sam’s direction. He pats down the sides of Sam’s torso, but hesitates when he feels over the metal plates on the right side of his chest.</p><p>“The sun is high in the sky, <em> bonito </em>,” Sam interjects. “We agreed that I’m allowed to speak now, no?” Jack lets out a growling kind of noise from between his teeth and whips Sam’s sweatshirt off. “I like where this is going now. What would make it perfect is if you were wearing a cute pair of lace panties for me to discover.”</p><p>Jack’s eyes go wide in realization. “You--!” He breaks eye contact for an instant. “You’re really gonna make me do this, are you?”</p><p>“I’m intrigued,” Sam says, smirking at full force.</p><p>“I’m searching you, god dammit!” Jack’s face goes bright red in seconds. “I can’t trust you any farther than I can fucking throw you!” And with that, he yanks down Sam’s sweatpants to be greeted by his half-hard cock. Jack mutters something under his breath about Sam getting turned on by this, and shoves his hands beneath the waist of Sam’s underpants. “You took them, didn’t you?”</p><p>Jack’s touch knocks the wind out of Sam, exploring the space behind his dick, then his balls. Sam’s hands find their way onto Jack’s shoulders. He’d always dreamt of those hands on him, in these places, but never like this. “Took what?”</p><p>His hands move on, to his ass. “Don’t make me say it! You know what!”</p><p>“What if I make you say it?”</p><p>“Please!” Jack’s near shouting. “Just shut <em>up</em>!” Sam starts to laugh, but in one movement, Jack slips his hands out of his pants and crashes both fists hard into his solar plexus. Sam lands hard on his ass, with Jack on top of him. He takes his time in pulling Sam’s pants off all the way, turning them inside out for any other pieces of hitchhiking fabric. A dryer sheet flutters out. Jack grits his teeth, tosses the pants on the ground, and stands.</p><p>“Aren’t you gonna search up my ass?” Sam asks. “I’ll tell you I’m not hiding anything in there, but there could be. You never know.”</p><p>“I don’t own anything big enough to fit,” Jack replies, and storms out of the bedroom.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. red fruit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this is the fight scene</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Sam stands up before Jack’s done closing the door and catches him standing at that mirror at the end of the hall. There’s a panel in the wall beside the mirror, which Jack opens to reveal a keypad which he punches a code into. A soft </span>
  <em>
    <span>click</span>
  </em>
  <span> is heard, and Jack opens the mirror on a hinge into a dark hallway. “Where are you going?” Sam asks, but Jack shuts the door like he never heard the question. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack says that he can’t trust Sam as far as he can throw him, and then leaves him on his own again to wreak havoc on his belongings. Sam shrugs and turns on his heel to head back into nosing through Jack’s bedroom again, but before he can get as far as the closet, the door at the end of the hall clicks open again, and determined footsteps thump in his direction. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A clawed hand digs into the crook of his flesh elbow. “You’re coming with me.” Drags Sam to the end of the hall to the mirrored door that he’d left open, and the dark hallway beyond. Finally, Jack does something that makes sense.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This must be your dungeon,” Sam quips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In a single movement, Jack twists his flesh arm at a painful angle behind his back. Sam cries out. “Like hell it is,” Jack says. The mirrored, windowed door closes behind them, and the lights turn on in front of them. It leads to a training room of some sort, with human-shaped dummies for sword work and a bench press collecting dust in the corner and rubberized floors and mirrors all around. Were there other rooms behind those mirrors that could look in on this room?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So what now, Pretty Boy?” Sam asks, Jack dragging him into the middle of the floor space.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I whoop your ass.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, so this </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> your dungeon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden comes at him with a right hook to the face, which Sam sidesteps, laughing all the way. He follows that smug fucking face, swings his fists together at his teeth, but Sam ducks. While he’s down there, he tries to sweep Raiden’s feet out from under him. Raiden jumps, kicks again towards Sam’s face, but he rolls backwards out of the way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is a good idea, actually,” Sam says, bouncing on the balls of his bare feet. “I was getting rusty.” If Raiden would agree with Sam on one thing, this would be it. But he’d never say it aloud.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden charges at him, teeth clenched, trying to seem from his trajectory that he would go for another right hook to the face but turns it into a kick headed for his jaw. Sam’s forearms block the blow from below, then feints a jab and moves to clock Raiden in the ear. Raiden’s own forearm knocks it out of the way, leaving him close enough to headbutt Sam. But he doesn’t, to psych him out. Sam’s dodging preemptively now, but once he realizes it’s not coming, flings his hands in the vicinity of Raiden’s throat to block Raiden’s hit to the solar plexus by sheer coincidence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The two stagger backwards. “I imagined this with a little more,” Sam scratches his chin, “pinning.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pardon me?” Raiden asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know,” Sam says, running at Raiden shoulder-first, so that he could easily dodge and push Sam against the mirrored wall, pulling his flesh arm up against his back again. “Like this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck you,” Raiden hisses, and yanks up on his arm just shy of dislocating it. Sam groans. The texture of the noise makes Raiden want to duct-tape his mouth shut because he has to turn everything into a sexual innuendo.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wish,” Sam says, then squats deep to knock Raiden off balance. He reflexively grips Sam’s shoulders to steady himself, but Sam snatches Raiden by the ankle with his metal arm from between his legs. Another tug and Raiden falls flat on his ass. He scrambles backwards to put some space in between them, but Sam is atop his chest in no time, crushing one of Raiden’s hands beneath his knee. “Ah,” he smirks at full force, leaning closer towards Raiden’s face. “This is more like it. Do you yi--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The end of his word turns into another groan. One of Raiden’s hands flies up to Sam’s throat, claws digging in, blood blossoming from the wounds. Both of Sam’s shoot up to grip his arm, but he doesn’t stop smirking, smiling now. “You maniac,” Raiden mutters, trying to wrap his hand a little better around Sam’s throat. “You absolute moron. You got a death wish or something, you fucking asshole?” He thinks he sees Sam nod. He could kill Sam right here and right now; he’d get away with it. There’d be nobody to miss him or search for him. Oh lord almighty, is that something hard pressing against Raiden’s sternum? “You have a boner right now, you sick fuck? Doesn’t matter, you’re a walking, talking erection yourself.” Sam tries to laugh. There’s blood dripping down onto his tank top now. Raiden wiggles his hand out from under Sam’s knee and grabs his neck in both hands. But that’s his mistake. Sam’s hands pop off Raiden’s single arm and shoot between the space between both of the arms, landing on the metallic windpipe. It doesn’t yield under all of Sam’s weight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden thinks Sam would say something along the lines of </span>
  <em>
    <span>how about now, </span>
  </em>
  <span>bonito</span>
  <em>
    <span>?</span>
  </em>
  <span> if he weren’t squeezing all the life out of his windpipe. He takes his hands off Sam’s throat now, since he obviously seemed to be enjoying that, and socks him upside the jaw. Sam pulls back and away from the blow, freeing his hands off Raiden’s neck. Not knowing how else to proceed, Raiden catches both of Sam’s hands in his, palm to palm, on his way down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam takes one look at their interlaced fingers and smirks smirks smirks some more. “How sweet,” he rasps. Glances back at Raiden, who has the wrath of hell in his eyes. “What say we call this one a draw?” He looks at Sam, looks back at their hands, then at Sam. “Or do you just want to hold hands for a while longer? I’m fine with anything.” Raiden lets go with one hand, grasps the other of Sam’s arms, and swings him sideways into the ground. Tries to clamber on top of him while their arms battle a while longer-- Sam bats away Raiden’s elbow, Raiden holds back Sam’s fist, Sam twists Raiden’s wrist while he feels out the funny bone in the one flesh arm between the four present. Sam tries to do the same with one of Raiden’s arm, tries to bend it in a way it shouldn’t, but Raiden digs his claws into Sam’s tricep and slams that arm over his head. All the while, Sam rams the heel of his hand straight into Raiden’s nose. The blow is just enough of a distraction, that with the combination of Sam thrusting his hips, half-hard boner and all, upwards as hard as he can, he can scoot out from underneath Raiden’s legs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’d be a real shame if I broke that,” Sam remarks, taking inventory of the gouges near his neck. They’re shallow, but bleeding profusely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’d be dead by now in a real fight,” Raiden says, holding his nose, trying to contain the bleeding. “Now I have to clean all this blood off the floor. You really should’ve yielded earlier.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s simply out of the question.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just, just,” Raiden points to the door, the hallway, the mirror beyond. “Go. Go look after your wounds.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you’d tell me where the supplies are, I could clean the place up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sam, please just shut up. You’re my guest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Bonito</span>
  </em>
  <span>, you do not get it. I am taking so much from you. Space on your couch, your roof over your head, your laundry machines, your groceries, your patience--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re trying to talk over each other now. “It’s not like I have anything else better to do now,” Raiden says, standing at last. He’s seeing stars now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“--Pretty Boy, if you’d please let me do this one little thing for you.” Raiden stumbles in Sam’s direction. Sam strides forward to meet him. “Did I hit you in the head too hard?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As he tries to pull himself away from Sam’s hand, rushing up to meet him, Raiden glances down at Sam’s crotch, just for a moment. His boner is gone. “Nothing,” Raiden says, stepping away. “Sometimes I just see stars for a second when I stand up after squatting like that.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Without another word, he pushes past Sam into the hall, past the mirror, and into his bedroom, slamming the door shut before Sam can think of following him in. He grabs his pillow, covered by that silk pillowcase Sam seems to love, and rips open the sliding glass door that leads to the little balcony outside. He slams </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> door closed, crashes his face into the pillow, and screams.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. one way</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>you can't stop me from writing more horny bullshit<br/>the smut is coming. soon i swear.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>After that whole ordeal, Sam has to give himself some release. He locks himself in the bathroom and lets his mind wander back to those pretty black lace panties, him ripping them clean off the seams from Jack’s ass, shoving his cock deep into the tight space inside. His strokes are fast and still shaky from the thrill of the fight. By the time he comes, Sam remembers he’s still bleeding and he should probably tend to those wounds soon. He laughs half a laugh that he would prioritize his boner over his injuries. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>All the towels are white, which complicates things further. He uses the towel from the shower yesterday and once he’s cleaned up, takes off his blood-dotted sweatshirt and pants and bundles it all up for laundry. He knows that Jack would blow a gasket if he saw Sam pantsless, so he plans a route to his garbage bag of belongings to extract the only other pair of trousers he has. In his tank top and underwear, he opens the door into the hallway at the same time Jack emerges from his bedroom with that silk pillowcase, covered in blood, in one hand. Jack tries not to make eye contact.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you need bandages or whatever, there’s first aid stuff in the kitchen cabinet next to the glasses,” Jack announces. “I got nanopaste too if you need it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are a blessing,” Sam says, watching Jack twitch at his response through a mirror while he tosses his stuff in the washing machine and heads to the kitchen. He watches Jack’s gaze flick to his back, then his ass the way there. Sam smirks over his shoulder. Jack pretends he didn’t see anything, but his eyes return to Sam’s lower half once he thinks Sam is preoccupied with applying salve to one of the claw-gouges in his neck. “See something you like?” Jack sighs. Sam figures this is as close to a reply as he’ll get. “You know, I could just put on another pair of pants.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dunno if that would be better or worse,” Jack says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s wrong, then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, that hardly qualifies as a pair of pants,” Jack elaborates, “if a pair of jeans has holes big enough for you to put your foot through, that defeats the purpose of wearing clothes.” He must’ve seen Sam’s only other pair of pants while going through his laundry last night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did I ask for your opinion on my taste in clothes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Juvenile delinquents wear obliterated jeans.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then to you, am I any better than a juvenile delinquent?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack doesn’t think Sam sees him bite his lip. “I want to say no.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam slaps a bandage over one of the seven gouges in his neck. “You sound like my father,” he muses. “‘Juvenile delinquents wear ripped jeans’.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look, there’s a difference between jeans that are ripped for the aesthetic and jeans that have a hole right next to the crotch,” Jack says, “which yours has. I don’t want to know what your underwear looks like. I don’t want to know what’s in your pocket.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well,” Sam turns around, just as Jack averts his eyes. “Aren’t you glad I’m not wearing those jeans?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t say.” Sam smirks a little, watches the mirrors for Jack’s eyes while he patches up the rest of his wounds. He doesn’t catch Jack moving to the laundry closet to start a load of their bloody clothes (and the silk pillowcase), but he hears the machine start up, and lo and behold, Jack is there. But just as Jack moves to sit back down in the living room, there’s a hideous </span>
  <em>
    <span>clankety clank</span>
  </em>
  <span> from the washing machine. Jack turns back to the closet, pauses the load, and sorts through all the clothes until he finds the culprit: the pair of handcuffs in his bathrobe pocket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack glances at Sam, clenching his jaw in response to Sam’s renewed smirk. “Okay,” Jack announces. “Let’s make a deal.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Go on,” Sam says, intrigued.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re allowed to fuck me.” Sam’s eyebrows shoot up and his mouth opens to speak. But Jack continues, closing the washing machine door with his foot and stepping deliberately up to the kitchen counter. “Once.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hmm, you should have mentioned that ten minutes ago.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s why I waited till you were done playing with yourself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are a cruel soul,” Sam replies, and just before Jack can add to his statement, he keeps talking. “But at once generous for allowing me one chance to change your mind, and for giving me this abode to rest my head in at night. You giveth and taketh away…” Sam’s glad his crotch is out of sight below the counters; there’s a little wetness of precome that happened during the sparring match. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you gonna let me talk now, or will you keep talking out your ass?” Sam pinches his lips together, smirking beneath. “There’s fine print under this deal, so you better listen and not forget this. The catch is that you have to fuck me under my terms. You let me do whatever I want with you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam unpinches his lips, gazing at the handcuffs gathered in Jack’s hand. “I was already planning on doing whatever Your Highness asked of me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack snuffs, or makes a sound as close to laughing as Sam has ever seen or heard him for as long as he’s known him. He hides the cuffs behind his back. “Like I believe that for a second. You’d just come up my ass as fast as you can.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what makes you believe that, Pretty Boy?” Sam asks, glancing at said ass through the one way mirror in the living room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You stare at it through the mirror whenever I’m not sitting on it.” Sam rips his attention away from Jack’s wonderful ass and returns his gaze. The two are both leaning against the counter, their faces close enough for a kiss. “Anyways. You can redeem your one free fuck anytime from here on out. But you only get one shot.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack’s face hardens as Sam’s grin widens. “Only one shot, eh?” He backs off the counter. “For whose sake are you doing this, Jack?” Sam asks, now turning his back to the most beautiful man on the planet, standing just so that his ass was in Jack’s view again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yours, obviously.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, you shouldn’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know you’d just go crazy otherwise.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, if you believe I’d, quote, ‘go crazy otherwise’, end quote, what’s stopping me from fucking somebody else?” Sam asks. “You know I’m handsome and easy. Well-endowed, too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wanna see?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Save it,” Jack insists.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam chuckles, pouring himself a glass of water from the sink. “And what if I fuck you so good, you want to break your agreement?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s highly unlikely,” Jack says, while Sam sips. He snorts mid-mouthful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm, Blondie, I’m just not feeling this deal,” he says, to get a rise out of him. “I could just pass it up. Sleep with somebody more… willing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m </span>
  </em>
  <span>willing.” Jack leans further across the counter. “And you want me. I know you do. Nobody else could give you a boner in the middle of a fight like that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A few have, actually.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam steps back over to meet him, bringing their faces closer. “Sam, don’t bullshit me,” Jack says, “you want to shove your stupid cock in whatever orifice of mine is available.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mm, more than that, </span>
  <em>
    <span>bonito</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he says, leaning dangerously close, closing his eyes and bracing for impact on Jack’s lips. But he’s met with claws, shoving him away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah. Rule number one. No kissing. This isn’t a movie or some porno. I’d lose whatever's left of my mind if you were in love with me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what if I said I was?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You aren’t,” Jack says, his voice dark. “In love with me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m just wondering.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam’s met with no response. He swallows. The question hangs and hangs, but it’s not dead yet. “I’m heading out,” he announces, and walks back over to his garbage bag to pull out those garbage jeans and his wallet. And so he heads out.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. mania</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>here it is. some sexytimes.<br/>your comments give me life in these trying times.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Sam walks through the front door again later that evening with a rolled up </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> under his arm. Bearing his usual smirk, he kicks his shoes off and heads straight for Raiden’s bedroom; Raiden drops his book and follows inside. The smirk only grows as Raiden catches up, leading him to believe Sam had something planned from the start.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What,” Raiden asks, but it’s said more as a statement. “Are you doing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I always thought this place needed a rug,” Sam replies, plopping the roll on the ground and revealing an awful silver shag rug with a little pink plastic shopping bag concealed inside. He stoops over to hike up the legs of Raiden’s bed and tuck the corners of the rug beneath, making sure his ass is in full view. “But we need to do something about the drapes now,” Sam stands. “They don’t quite match.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So much petty fury ignites in Raiden’s gut. Of course Sam would have to turn everything he says and does into a sexual innuendo. Raiden stands there and seethes, watches Sam pick up the pink plastic bag and twirl it around his finger. He doesn’t want to know what’s in that bag. If he knows what’s good for him, and wants to maintain a healthy blood pressure level, he should snatch it away and just chuck it off the goddamn balcony to let it fall seventeen stories down on the head of somebody who gives a shit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, and,” Sam produces a bottle of, </span>
  <em>
    <span>ahem</span>
  </em>
  <span>, intimate lubricant. Wiggles the tube, then wiggles his eyebrows, and scoots it inside the drawer in Raiden’s bedside table. Which means he would’ve seen the handcuffs and the photo frames he’d relocated there. “You know. For your ‘hobbies’.” Raiden can hear the air quotes around the word. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He opens his mouth, then closes it. Sam’s obviously waiting for a reaction, so it would be best if Raiden just stayed silent. Sam clears his throat, then under the sound, mutters, “Ice princess.” Takes a sit on the bed, his hairy knees and thighs greeting Raiden from through the foot-sized holes in his awful, terrible jeans. “I don’t reckon you got many housewarming gifts when you first moved in here,” he says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam was right. Hal and Dave got Raiden a frying skillet. Courtney bought him a candle holder. Boris gave him a platter for hors d’oeuvres which he used exactly once during that Christmas party Raiden spent glued to the couch with a glass of wine hoping nobody would interact with him. That was about it. “It’s gonna collect dust,” Raiden says. His voice cracks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just trying to pay you back for your hospitality. It’s the thought that counts, eh?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, you can’t buy my respect.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t care. I love you anyways.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden’s teeth clench before Sam can say ‘you’. “Don’t!” He meant to shout it, but the word goes in all sorts of directions. “Don’t even </span>
  <em>
    <span>joke</span>
  </em>
  <span> about it. Say literally anything else. Say you want to fuck my ass. ‘Cause at least that’s true.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah,” Sam claps his hands. “That reminds me.” Fuck him for trying to change the subject. “If we’re going to be engaging in your </span>
  <em>
    <span>interests</span>
  </em>
  <span> anytime soon, you don’t think that we should come up with a special word...?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“... Murasama.” Raiden turns on his heel to leave the room. Any excuse to abort this conversation now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm, good choice.” Sam says, behind him. “By the way, whatever happened to her?” Follows Raiden outside and into the living room. He grips one of the round decorative mirrors there in both hands and gives it a turn clockwise. Something out of sight clicks. “Another secret passageway? Is this one the dungeon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up and move.” The secret room was supposed to be where he put his armour, but now it was just where any random clutter around the house went by default. Raiden pushes past Sam back into the kitchen, then gets on his knees to clear all the pots and pans out of a lower cabinet. When it’s empty, Raiden crawls into a tunnel to the space behind his kitchen. He can feel Sam’s eyes on his ass. By the time he’s on the other end, he hears Sam clambering in after him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tight squeeze in here,” he remarks, wiggling his eyebrows. His shoulders rub up against the walls.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden brushes his hands off on his slacks. “That’s a bold thing to say when your face is at my foot level.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You say that as if I wouldn’t enjoy sucking your toes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you ever want to see your damn sword again you better shut up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or else what?” Sam’s eyes dart to the corner of the room, past the case where his unoccupied armour lay. Murasama was resting there, in its sheath. No layer of dust on it; Raiden made good use of it in his work. Sam wriggles himself out of the passage as Raiden retrieves the sword.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m surprised you hadn’t bugged me about it earlier,” Raiden says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My mind was on other things.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yeah, like Raiden’s lips or his legs or his ass or something like that. “Sure it was.” Sam holds out his hand to receive Murasama, but Raiden doesn’t give it to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you holding her hostage?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden purses his lips. “Where’s your manners?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come on, Blondie, that sword is mine. You were merely borrowing her.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As far as I knew until yesterday, you were dead and it was mine,” Raiden replies. “Now let’s hear it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hear what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam flits his eyelashes and raises his voice to falsetto. “Pretty please.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden wants to gag. He hands Murasama back. “Alright, I’ll do anything as long as you don’t do… that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anything, you say?” Sam teases an inch of the blood red blade out of its sheath, seeming pleased that the sword was in working order. “... And we’ve decided on our safe word.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What I’m gonna do to you, we won’t need a safe word.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know how much experience you have with kinks, but to me, Pretty Boy--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As in you’re gonna be gagged with that silk pillowcase you love so much. And I’ll use those handcuffs too, as an added bonus.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t think you were this serious, now.” Sam’s sentence ends but his mouth is open.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, if you’re not into that, you could just go fuck somebody else.” Raiden reaches up to shut Sam’s jaw. “It would be </span>
  <em>
    <span>so</span>
  </em>
  <span> easy. ‘Cause you’re handsome and available. Your words, not mine.” Teases his thumb </span>
  <em>
    <span>so</span>
  </em>
  <span> close to the very edge of Sam’s bottom lip.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell me, then,” Sam says, trying to keep Raiden from sticking his thumb in his mouth, “how much you want to fuck me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You wouldn’t believe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hardly can.” And then, “What if I want to redeem my one free fuck now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then you’re mine.” Sam’s hand, the one that isn’t holding Murasama, tries to wrap itself around Raiden’s jaw, pulling him in to seal it with a kiss. Raiden twists that wrist. With his hand so near Sam’s face, he uses it to bend Sam’s face back at such an awkward angle that he’s staring sideways at his reflection in the plexiglas around the case that held Raiden’s armour. “You remember what rule number one is?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Enlighten me, Blondie.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No kissing. Last time I’m gonna say it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam lets the smirk come. “You say that like there’s a rule number two.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden’s hands fly away, then come together in front of him, showing Sam both pinky and index fingers extended from a closed fist. “Rule number two. This is our signal. Show it and I’ll stop.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So if I show ‘rock on’, you’ll stop trying to get my rocks off.” Sam’s eyebrows quirk at each instance of the word ‘rock’.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rule number three is no shitty puns.” Raiden says while Sam laughs at his own joke. He beckons to Sam and hunkers down into the passage to the kitchen once again. Raiden figures he can’t be surprised when he feels a hand grab his left ass cheek halfway through. To alleviate this, he raises a leg to feel for Sam’s face with his foot and pushes him back as far as he can. “Rule number four,” Raiden says, on the other side now. Murasama scoots out onto the tiled kitchen floor before its wielder follows suit. “Is that you need to give me a few minutes before this whole ordeal starts.” As soon as he’s sure Sam is watching, Jack heads to the bathroom, with a deliberate swing in his hips. “In the meantime you can get on the bed and get naked.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whatever you wish, Your Highness.” Raiden gives Sam a final glance before closing the bathroom door behind him and starting the least sexy part of the whole process.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was enough for Sam if it was an invitation into Jack’s bedroom. When he enters, though, he realizes neither of them had addressed the other object in the little pink bag that arrived alongside the new rug and the lube. Sam scoops it up and slips the lacy, racy red pair of panties out of it, ignoring the receipt that falls out in the motion. Ever since he’d first seen that glint in Jack’s eye at the base of the World Marshall building, he always thought he looked so good in red…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bathroom door bangs open, and Jack is there, unarmoured and unclothed once again. “Why aren’t you undressed?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam drops the panties somewhere off the edge of the bed. “Well, you see, Pretty Boy, I got a little lost in thought.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When I tell you to do something,” Jack says, striding over to where Sam is sprawled out on the bed. “You better fucking do it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or else?” He’s dodged the question every other time Sam asked it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack leans down into his ear and whispers: “I will just leave you here to masturbate like the pathetic, horny son of a bitch you are. Imagining all the things you wish you could do to me while you jerk yourself off like some porn addict living in his mom’s basement.” He takes a handful of Sam’s tank top and tugs it off its seams with a snap. “Don’t test me. This is your last warning.” It flutters in tatters to rest on the shitty shag rug.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm,” Sam scratches his chin. “I wouldn’t want to risk it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I suppose I should go over the rest of the rules I didn’t mention earlier.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will there be a test later?” Sam asks, maneuvering his awful, terrible jeans off. Makes sure he tosses his pants so that they land overtop the red panties on the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rule number five is that not a single damn noise comes out of your mouth. Unless you’re spoken to,” Jack says, leaning over Sam far enough to force him to lie down on that pink silk pillowcase in order to give him enough space. He pulls open his nightstand drawer and puts the tube of lube and the handcuffs from earlier on the tabletop. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now Jack rips the pillow out from beneath Sam’s head and whips off the pink silk. “Rule number six is not to resist or struggle.” Jack straddles Sam’s waist as he goes for the handcuffs once again. Sam thinks he can feel an aperture pressed on his abdomen where Jack’s asshole could be. “And rule number seven is no touching, but I figured that’s a given.” He slaps one of them around Sam’s wrist, and they’re as tight as the real deal. He cuffs Sam across two of the dowels in the headboard and puts the key back on the nightstand, so close yet so far away. “Now, since you wanted a test so badly. What’s rule number one?” It takes a moment for Sam’s mind to process that he’s being prompted. “Speak.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No kissing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s rule number six?” Sam blanks. “Speak!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still nothing. Sam tries to laugh it off, but Jack scoots off him, yanks one of his legs up by the ankle, and smacks him on the ass. A cry escapes Sam.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rule number six is that you don’t struggle or make a scene. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten rule number five.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Easy one. No bad puns.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack pulls his ass off the bed by the ankle again and spanks him twice this time. “That’s rule three. Rule five is no noisemaking. Now show me rule number two.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Smirking, Sam turns his wrists to give Jack two middle fingers. In response, Jack rips Sam’s underwear off, shoves his ass so it’s pointed at the ceiling with his spine at a wholly uncomfortable curvature, and slaps down on both his ass cheeks five times, hard enough to prick tears in Sam’s eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re purposefully fucking up just because you like getting spanked!” As Jack lets Sam’s legs down, he shows him the proper signal, the double-rock-on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just for demonstration purposes,” Sam says. “I’m still alright to go on with this act. Which I should add I’m liking very much so far, what a very sexy dom you make, Pretty Bo--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack catches his fingers in Sam’s mouth. “Rule number five is in effect,” he whispers. “If you have any more questions or concerns, speak now or forever hold your peace. ‘Cause the gag is going in.” Sam shakes his head, tries to work his tongue over the digits, give him some sort of pleasant sensation in return, but it’s futile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Speak! Yes or no.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, sir.” Sam manages with one last defiant smirk. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack uses the opening to stuff the pillowcase in his mouth. Once the gag is knotted in place, Jack hikes Sam’s legs way up again and slaps his ass seven more times on both cheeks, till they’re as bright red as Sam’s face. “You should’ve just told me you liked getting your ass slapped,” Jack’s eyes flick to Sam’s boner. There’s precome dripping onto his chest, due to how his back is curled around. “I won’t object to that.” It’s getting hard to breathe. Sam clenches his teeth on the silk as Jack spanks and spanks and spanks. “Your ass is so hairy,” Jack mutters, in between slaps. “Are you really going to come just from this?” Sam shakes his head no. He’s unsure whether Jack can see him over his ass. It didn’t count as speaking, right?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack lets Sam’s ass crash down on the bed at last. A breath of relief flares out his nostrils. Jack reaches over him to test the cuffs again. The look in his eye is amused-- perhaps he’s pleased, now that he’s turned the tables on Sam. Nowhere to run around and find embarrassing things, no way to say stupid bullshit to get a rise out of him. It’s Jack’s turn to get a rise out of Sam. And a rise he is certainly getting. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Jack’s mouth plunges down upon Sam’s length, which knocks the breath right out of his lungs in a gush out his nose once again. Jack’s tongue circles around the foreskin and Sam’s whole body vibrates in an effort to keep him still. Were his hands free, Sam would definitely have them on Jack’s waist. He would also love to wrap his legs around that waist and pull him so much closer. But his legs, while free of physical restraints, were also bound by rules number six and seven. The greatest movement Sam can manage without Jack noticing is pouring all his energy into curling his toes. Jack moves halfway down his length. Sam has to barricade a moan in his throat, keep it from escaping around the gag.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Colour me surprised,” Jack says, after pulling off. Sam’s cock feels so cold, shined with Jack’s synthetic saliva under the unforgiving air in the room. Jack leans over him, to retrieve the lube. “Seeing this through pretty well, aren’t you?” Uncaps the bottle and works some over his fingers. Without breaking eye contact, he breaches one finger through Sam’s asshole. “You’re being such a good boy,” he whispers, and adds another. “If you can come now, I’ll let you speak.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fortunately, the cumming part is made easy while Jack scissors hard against Sam’s prostate and gives a single jerk to his half-wet shaft. Orgasm rolls down Sam’s spine; a force of nature leaving his vision red-- the inside of his eyelids, his skull, probably, after rolling his eyes so far back. He clenches his teeth down on the soggy silk, but it’s soon mercifully lifted out of Sam’s mouth, discarded in the direction of his jeans and that pair of pretty panties.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Speak,”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jack,” Sam’s still shaking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell me what you want, now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah, I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Sam murmurs, with Jack within kissing range.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you liked it just like that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Sam says, on reflex, but then, “no. Wait, no.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know you want to do things to me,” Jack’s voice is dark.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So many things.” Sam grins through the fog of orgasm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Like what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Everything.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack tsks. “A little more specific.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought I was signing on to fuck your ass, for starters,” Sam replies. “Hear you scream instead of this ‘shut-your-pie-hole’ nonsense.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not going to hear me scream unless you tell me you have a shit fetish.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is that a challenge, </span>
  <em>
    <span>bonito</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” Sam asks. “Well, if not that, I’d like to ask you something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Make it quick.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Could you bring me my pants?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s Jack’s turn to smirk. He bends halfway off the bed, the box spring screeching in agony. “Tapping out so soon?” The smugness vanishes from his face when he sees the new pair of panties hidden beneath Sam’s jeans, though.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How do you like them?” Jack holds them through the leg holes like a cat’s cradle. “It would mean the world to me if I could see you in them, Blondie.” Sam hopes to god Jack doesn’t give them the same fate as his tank top and underwear; they cost over forty bucks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You see, Sam,” Jack </span>
  <em>
    <span>twacks</span>
  </em>
  <span> the panties so that they land round his right wrist. “I can’t just wear these right now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why not? You need to get in the mood?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, because they smell like the inside of a warehouse.” He gestures over his shoulder. “Like that awful rug you just got me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s the problem with that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I might consider it,” the devious glint in Jack’s eye manifests once again. His smile spreads. Sam figures he’s either going to love or despise what comes next. “If…”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. pomp and circumstance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>well shit this isn't smut i uh.... uh..... fcuk.... um... i just keep tacking chapters onto this fic like a human centipede.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Raiden gazes down on the sight below him-- Sam, lying on the shag rug, handcuffed to the leg of the bed and wearing nothing but the pair of scarlet panties he thought he could get Jack in-- and adds a third finger into his hole, shoving the garment’s crotch aside. Sam’s legs are up on his shoulders and the gag is no more, leaving Raiden to revel in him clenching his teeth, biting his lip, trying not to squirm and moan while Rule Number Five is in effect. Sam’s nostrils flare. The undies are tight on him, made even tighter by his cock yearning against the fabric from inside, and they ride so low that Raiden can’t tell if he’s looking at his happy trail or his pubes right now. That’s the problem-- Sam is </span>
  <em>
    <span>so hairy</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Half of Raiden wants to take out an afternoon and a roll of shipping tape to do some manscaping on this son of a bitch. The other half wants to slurp the sweat out from between his pecs until Raiden is coughing up furballs like a sick cat all the next morning. And yet Sam couldn’t torture that confession out of Raiden if he tried-- he’d sooner die choking on Sam’s dick than say anything to boost his ego further. “This would be so much easier with a vibrator or something,” Raiden thinks out loud, to hit the whole pleasurable torture thing home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you’ve been a pretty good boy so far,” he says, pretending not to notice the shift in Sam’s brow when he withdraws his fingers, and the even further shift when he squirts a little more lube into his palm. Raiden also pretends to ignore the half of a vocalization that Sam gives him once he’s smearing lube up and down his cock. “You better be grateful I even considered doing any of this for you.” He straddles Sam’s waist. “And no cumming allowed. I don’t wanna be cleaning out my digestive tract for the rest of the night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then Raiden tips his hips back and sits down square on his cock, taking his entire length as nonchalantly as he would as if he were sitting down to work on the next scene of his latest screenplay. But make no mistake: Raiden’s a stone cold killer-- there’s no bedroom eyes, no flushed face, no pretty moans as he sinks down onto Sam’s painfully hard cock. Not even when he starts to move-- no nothing. It’s a one-way street. Strained breaths squeak out from between Sam’s clenched teeth while that glorious, tight chamber envelops him like velvet and butter and daydreams. The cuffs are starting to leave red stripes where they bite into his wrists. Raiden can see Sam straining against them, too, hear the moans that escape his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can hear you.”Raiden’s smile is all teeth now that Sam’s stupid smirk is just a memory. He tightens the chute around Sam’s cock; a little shy of cutting off blood circulation. Sweat glistens on Sam’s chest and down his neck. Raiden’s eyes flick back up to his hands once more before he loosens, pulls off and stands up from the floor. Sam’s eyes go from nearly shut to round as dinner plates. “Wasn’t just a bluff.” Those eyes follow him as far as they can, out the door, into the hallway, through the one-way mirror that looks into the living room-- where, leaning against the arm of the couch, was Murasama. He pops the blood red blade out of its sheath, looking it over in its state. Raiden almost never took the time to appreciate Murasama when it was pristinely cleaned and cared for, only when it was stained with blood and dulled from slicing through layers of armour. But when he steps back over to where Sam lies, nearly naked, handcuffed to the bed, expecting at least </span>
  <em>
    <span>some</span>
  </em>
  <span> sexual pleasure to be gained from this interaction-- Raiden realizes how easy it would be to kill him, and with his own sword no less. His step falters. How could he possibly be thinking about that at a time like this?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What could you possibly be planning with my dear Murasama?” Sam asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden shudders and takes a breath in, but his lungs are grasped by an iron hand halfway up. “Is that--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did I stutter?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The three words hit Raiden like Sam had just released his wind-up key. He shakes his head, drops the blade. Steps over Sam’s legs, avoiding eye contact. “Sam, I,” his words come out in a gush of hot air, “I’m-- I can’t do this.” Searches the top of the nightstand for the key to Sam’s cuffs. It’s a no-show. Pulls open the drawer and takes everything out to search further, but to no avail. “Fuck,” Raiden would have panicked if years in combat hadn’t replaced it with the need to throw fists or see blood. He clambers onto the bed and tosses aside the comforter in search of the key. “Shit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s the matter?” Sam’s voice from below.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The key,” Raiden starts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can’t find it?” A nod. “Get off the bed.” Raiden complies, and Sam pushes against the underside of the frame with his feet high enough for the cuffs to slip out from beneath the leg of the bed. Sam works himself to his feet, with a little difficulty due to his handicapped hands, rolls his shoulders, and meets Raiden’s gaze. “Should we talk about it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack blinks. “No.” He walks out the bedroom door and shuts it behind him in that Jack sort of way. Sam even hears him punch in the code to open the mirror-door at the end of the hall, to the training room. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He lets the deja vu wash over him for a moment before deciding he should get himself out of these cuffs-- and cleaned up, and into some proper clothes before confronting Jack. The nail file that aided him in breaking into Jack’s room in the first place crosses the first item off his to-do list. Sam salvages his clothes from the bedroom and tosses himself into the shower. By the time he’s fully clothed again, Sam figures that Jack had probably cooled off by now. Some guesswork at the wear on the buttons on the keypad near the mirror-door lets Sam slip into the training room. Inside, Jack is doing a number on that punching bag suspended in the corner, which Sam now knows actually hides a segment of steel girder within. It probably looks like a crumpled-up piece of tin foil by now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you want,” Jack says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just thought I’d let you know I’d be heading out for the night.” Sam lets a fragment of a shit-eating grin slip through his words.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t want to talk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>You</span>
  </em>
  <span> were the one who said he didn’t want to talk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just came here to tell you that I’d be out all night,” Sam says, matter-of-factly. “And I will be back in the morning.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then get lost,” Jack replies. Socks the bag once more. “Good riddance.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam turns and leaves, making sure his phone and his wallet were in his jacket pocket. His mother said once never to have important discussions, make important decisions at nighttime. It seemed that advice rang especially true for Jack.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>The next morning, Raiden awakens from a dream he can’t remember and is welcomed to the reek of Sam’s cum and an assortment of other unpleasant odours from various bodily fluids. There should be some sort of carpet-shampoo attachment for the shot vac kicking around somewhere. Sam is absent from the couch. The blankets are untouched since he saw them last evening. Of course, he did pop in to the training room </span>
  <em>
    <span>just </span>
  </em>
  <span>to make a point he would be out all night. When Raiden gets around to shampooing the awful shag rug, the vacuum starts making this awful little </span>
  <em>
    <span>tink tink tink</span>
  </em>
  <span> noise like something’s rattling around inside. When he empties the bag, lo and behold, there is the key to the handcuffs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time Raiden’s started a laundry load full of bedsheets plus that silk pillowcase again, he realizes that he’s left his phone on silent and he has six missed calls and eight texts from Sam. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Pretty Boy Please I Need You To Let Me In</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Sam sent. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Am Literaly Standing Right Outside Your Apartment Buidling Please.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Why Does He Type Like That</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Raiden thinks to himself. He slaps his phone back on the counter and returns to the bedroom, stepping past the now-sheathed Murasama and his stripped bed, and opens the sliding door to the balcony. He leans over the railing, where the shampooed silver shag rug hangs to dry. Indeed, seventeen stories down below, is the top of Sam’s head and shoulders, seeming exactly how he left twelve hours ago, except he holds his leather jacket in one hand over his shoulder. Maybe if Raiden leaves him standing there for long enough, he’ll just leave for good-- employing theory he used to wait out clueless guards back in the days he was fully flesh and blood. And yet, there was still so much he didn’t know about Sam. His background. How he came to be not-dead after what happened in the badlands. What he did all last night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It becomes clear once Raiden takes one last deep breath and meets Sam at street level. He smells obnoxiously flowery and a little boozy, and there’s a stain of something shimmery near the base of his neck. Sam smirks once Raiden notices and strolls right inside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi,” Raiden says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” Sam replies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Had fun,” Raiden adds, as an observation instead of a question.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not one, but two gorgeous women on my arm the whole night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can spare me the gory details.” Raiden pushes the button to call the elevator and suddenly dreads the thought of sharing such an enclosed space with Sam. Fucking asshole, had to go out of his way to brag about how much pussy he gets. Raiden thinks about asking why he’s here, but after all he has his sword, and his garbage bag full of garbage belongings. And where else would Sam go now?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They arrive back at Raiden’s apartment and seem to be content staring each other down once the door is closed. “Now what?” Raiden asks. </span>
  <em>
    <span>What conversation topic do you want to torture me with now?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam licks his lips. “I think I’ll go work out in your training room now.” Several hours of shopping followed by one of terrible cyborg BDSM plus an entire night of partying with some poor women and </span>
  <em>
    <span>then </span>
  </em>
  <span>he’s going to work out? Raiden doesn’t know where Sam gets the energy. Something, something nanomachines, my love. Sam turns to leave, but says over his shoulder, “feel free to join me, Your Highness.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where were you?” Raiden asks, before Sam can leave. “All last night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought you told me to ‘spare the gory details’.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>need</span>
  </em>
  <span> to know the details. I just wanna know the gist of it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I already told you. Hitting up the club. Drinking. Sleeping with women. In that order.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heat prickles along Raiden’s spine. “You still want to sleep with me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something flips a switch in his brain when Sam replies, “jury’s still out on that one, </span>
  <em>
    <span>bonito</span>
  </em>
  <span>. And besides,” he punches in the code next to the door Raiden doesn’t remember showing him or even remotely implying permission to work. “You said I was allowed to fuck you. Once.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>By the time Raiden shows up in his own gym like </span>
  <em>
    <span>he’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> the visitor, he walks in on Sam training with Murasama unsheathed. The sword in his hand dances like an extension of his being; his stance is sturdy. He seems deeply focused, like the old master-type characters in the samurai movies Raiden used to so religiously watch. Sam only acknowledges his entrance with a single glance. It would be tactless to disturb him, so Raiden stares on, sipping a cup of tea. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it would be so easy for Sam to catch him off guard and unarmed. With his superior skills, he could have Raiden bleeding out on the ground in a single movement. Murasama’s high frequency is turned off, but Raiden shifts from staring mindlessly to watching with intent anyways.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually, Sam drops his stance and sheathes Murasama once again, gazing at Raiden expectantly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Should I have not interrupted?” Raiden knows Sam noticed the shift in his stare.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve taught these drills to a class of seventy people once. I can handle the pressure.” And then, like an anvil falling from the sky. “Just using her how she was intended to be used. As a weapon. And not some depraved maniac’s vibrator. But alas.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, I told you. You sleep with me on my terms.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And if those terms involve defiling the last material remnant of my family, that’s a whole other ballpark, Pretty Boy,” Sam says, only now turning to look at Raiden. “So are you now going to make me feel bad about not letting you do that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t. You used the safe word before I could.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I would let you use me as a doormat, Jack, but even I must draw the line somewhere.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you getting at?” Raiden asks. Sam ambles to the back corner of the room, near the punching bag.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All this…” Raiden grasps at words that fall like sand through the sieve. “... Grovelling.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Grovelling?” Sam echoes. “Is my ‘grovelling’ not justified, Jack? Am I supposed to feel grateful for the privilege of being handcuffed to your bed and dressed in women’s underwear? Like your ass changed who I am?” He gives the punching bag a smack for emphasis. “Fuck!” Curses in Portugese under his breath after his left fist hits solid metal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden exhales through his nose. “There’s an I-beam in there, in case you’re wondering. Or what’s left of an I-beam.” Sam shakes out his hand, inspects the knuckles, grumbling the whole way. “What do you want now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“First of all, an apology, at least.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“... I’m sorry.” It comes out like a kidney stone. “I never really felt that way about a sword, I guess. It was the last thing on my mind.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And</span>
  <em>
    <span> I </span>
  </em>
  <span>never felt like this about a man before. Must be because all </span>
  <em>
    <span>your</span>
  </em>
  <span> swords are ‘tools of justice’.” Sam’s heading past Raiden, to leave the gym. “Second of all, I need some ice for this.” Waves his flesh hand, a dark bruise that stands out even against his skin already starting to form. “And third, something to eat. And probably a nap, and then--” The door closes behind him.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. agape</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>is it at all weird i find it more enjoyable to write them arguing than fucking</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>So Sam slowly comes to terms with the thought that the most beautiful man on the planet may also be a piece of fucking shit. He wants to be surprised, but the nagging voice at the back of his head that could be his father says he had it coming. While he showers, that voice scolds Sam that Jack was too good to be true. While he cooks an omelet because he hadn’t anything to eat for the past twelve hours, the voice points out how Jack was trying to guilt Sam into staying submissive. Before he crashes on the couch for a nap at ten in the morning, it calls him a fool and a moron and a spineless pansy for falling for shallow men with shallow beauty before the mirror door at the end of the hall cracks open once again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Speak of the devil. Sam would open his mouth to rile him up again, but his eyelids have different ideas. The events of the past two days weigh so heavy on him, crashing down like a tidal wave. He dreams about dark spikes and high heels and rubbery synthetic muscle. It’s so close but he can’t touch it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After the casino, that first and last air-quote </span>
  <em>
    <span>errand</span>
  </em>
  <span> his father had him run before his untimely death, a young Samuel found himself mindlessly running laps, lifting weights, doing reps, in order to feel anything but the crushing dread enclosing him. At first he made a point to avoid the drills his father had taught him to repeat every day. But like clockwork, the drills reared their heads and wormed their way back into his routine. There’s only so many push-ups you can do until your armpits hurt so bad you can’t brace your weight against the mattress to get out of bed. Sam awakens at one in the afternoon and returns to the mirrored door at the end of the hall. Jack interrupted him the first time through, after all. He has unfinished business.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden tries not to bristle at the sound of the door clicking open and shut again. Sam is here to stay, Raiden tells himself, here to stay. What are you going to do with him? What are you going to do with yourself? The answer, tasting like acid in his throat, is a resounding </span>
  <em>
    <span>nothing</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Rose once told him that if someone splits off with you, and their mind is unchanged for three days straight, then you can and should kiss their ass goodbye. Sam didn’t even leave for a whole twenty-four hours. Probably because he didn’t have a choice. But now he does. The acid is in his mouth. Raiden catches himself feeling opposed to the thought of Sam leaving. And the surge of dread at the thought of Sam dying, killed by his own hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s normal, Raiden tells himself. To not want somebody to die. But that’s bar-on-the-floor levels of basic human instinct. It’s not like he deserves a medal. He can get plenty of those by killing people in the name of the American flag. But no matter how hard Raiden tries to swallow it all back, the pressure builds. It’s going to get out one way or another. If not through the mouth, through his nose. If he keeps feeling this way about his feelings, he’ll be swimming in his own feedback loop. Raiden feels every iota of wear on his joints as he stands from his bed, and on the way, tosses the rumpled blanket Sam used over the back of the couch so that it looks at least somewhat presentable. It’s starting to smell like him. Raiden picks a single coarse, wiry, dark hair out from between its fibers, one too long to be from Sam’s beard but too short to be from his head. He doesn’t want to just toss it on the floor, or god forbid, lose it in the awful silver shag rug he just cleaned, so it goes to the kitchen garbage.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He enters the room wordlessly. Sam is blasting awful electronic music from his phone while sitting with his bare back pressed against the wall, knees flexed at a perfect right angle. “Pretty Boy,” Sam says, and Raiden braces himself for an easy ‘take a seat’ joke accompanied by a suggestive pat on the lap. But it doesn’t come.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I kind of miss being able to actually work out,” Raiden mutters, sitting on the floor against the wall. Sam turns down the volume. “Something to do besides stewing in your own self hatred.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s kind of complicated when you’re even ten percent metal,” Sam says, flexing his right arm and giving the bicep a slap. “This baby can curl five hundred pounds before the suit or nanos. I’m set for life. On the other hand, though,” he brandishes his flesh arm and wiggles an eyebrow. “Get it? The other hand?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can I say rule number three is in effect?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam grins, stands from the wall, gets on the ground and starts doing push-ups with his left arm. “Hm, stop trying to make me laugh, </span>
  <em>
    <span>bonito</span>
  </em>
  <span>, I will land flat on my face.” And then, “if you’re here to help count my reps you may as well give up now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden lets Sam see him bite the tiniest corner of his lip. While he might be the slightest bit more willing to admit his partner’s physique was downright irresistible; that still didn’t change the fact that the combined strength of Sam’s organic body, a smattering of nanomachines, and a single mechanical arm was a drop in the ocean compared to the maximum output of Raiden’s cyborg enhancements. And yet in a battle of fists and feet, they were evenly matched...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“While we’re on the subject,” Sam speaks again. “Even if you were still mostly flesh and blood, I couldn’t see you getting much beefier than you are now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If they added any more synthetic muscle on me, my skeleton would warp.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Graças a deus</span>
  </em>
  <span> for that, then. I very much like your pretty dancer physique.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And I very much didn’t ask for your opinion on my body.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But my opinion matters, doesn’t it? Very much?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve never cared about a single word you’ve ever said to me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam drops face-first on the floor, crying out at the sudden impact to his nose, laughing, wheezing. “You have never told a bigger lie than that.” Points a metal finger in Raiden’s direction. “And now I will not be able to work out because I won’t be able to stop laughing at the silly words that come out of your silly mouth. So thank you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sam,” Raiden’s voice is deadpan. “Please.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a good thing those scientists didn’t change your pretty face, Blondie, because otherwise you have the charisma of a wet sock.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So are we moving from teasing to straight-up insults now? Because that was a hundred percent uncalled for.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And you just called me a moron seven times in the past twenty minutes.” Sam brings himself to sit; the two of them on the floor like a couple of squatters. He pauses the song on his phone. “And I thought you didn’t care about what I say to you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not just gonna let you walk all over me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But of course it only applies when I’m telling you about your own flaws! Because you groan and sigh and drown it out every time I try to tell you that you are so beautiful, </span>
  <em>
    <span>querido</span>
  </em>
  <span>, you are my reason for breathing, my guiding li--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can you shut up?” Raiden speaks over him. “I heard it helps you get more reps in.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam goes wide-eyed, looking over his shoulders as if others were seeing this. “There it is! It happened again! Because, this whole predicament is, hm,” scratches his chin, “lending me some very deep insight within your psyche.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not seeing deep insight within shit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s because it isn’t deep insight at all! You just have to add two and two together,” Sam smacks his two fists together as if plugging and unplugging the Christmas tree from the extension cord to see if it would light up this time. “You only want to hear me insult you, degrade you, only want to believe the bad things everyone sees in you...” His sentence trails off. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is this your roundabout way of suggesting I have a humiliation kink?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!” Sam topples, the heels of his hands in his eyes, snickering the whole way down. He’s more out of breath than if he’d spent the whole time doing push-ups as planned. He recovers in a moment, Raiden wordlessly watching the whole way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So are we just not going to talk about last night?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Raiden says, but he means it as a plea. “I’ve said what needed to be said about last night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You haven’t said </span>
  <em>
    <span>shit</span>
  </em>
  <span> about last night, that is what.” Sam’s words just bring up more acid. “You just tried to guilt me into letting you be some sociopath.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not </span>
  <em>
    <span>trying</span>
  </em>
  <span> to be a sociopath.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And yet?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And yet every time I touch you I think about killing you.” Raiden sighs. “Come on, Sam. You know my deal. You were there, that night at--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-- At World Marshall,” Sam and Raiden say, at the same time. “Yes, I know. Continue,” Sam prompts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When we sparred,” it drips out from between Raiden’s teeth, “when you were cuffed to the bed. When I took your sword. I knew it would be so easy to just…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And yet you didn’t,” Sam says, when Raiden’s mouth goes dry again. “Why.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden stands up off the floor, but Sam is faster. He’s halted Raiden’s trajectory by imposing a single hand against his waist. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s the thing.” Raiden tries to laugh, but it comes out as an ugly gasp. “Maybe I am just going stir-crazy in here by myself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then why are you living here by yourself?” Sam asks. “If it’s not good for you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’d be worse for the people living with me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam starts running the math in his head. Jack sees himself more likely to act on his intrusive thoughts around his own family than towards a man who once stood on the opposite side of his battlefield. “Are you thinking about killing me right now?” He ventures.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t push your luck.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam laughs. “The solution is simple, you see,” the smirk hasn’t faded from his face. “I fuck you until you are unable to think of </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You just let me use my hands and my mouth next time--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you serious,” Jack tries to say under his breath. “That’s not how it works, Sam.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You never had sex with me in the first place, Jack.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s not what I mean.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Having sex</span>
  </em>
  <span> is defined as ‘the exchange of bodily fluids’. And you did </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> give me any of yours.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s because I don’t have the mechanisms.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I noticed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Moreover, my body can’t create those hormones necessary for that kind of pleasure.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, that hole I was fucking…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was the tail end of my digestive tract. Nothing more, nothing less.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam purses his lips. “For whose sake,” his sentence trails off, but picks up again. “Why even bother?" Raiden spins off the hand on his waist, trying to evade capture once again and head for the door. Sam had a feeling he’d try to dance around this question, but not this much. He ends up standing right in front of the hall back to the mirror-door, bracing a hand against either side of the corridor. All he wanted was an answer. Even a </span>
  <em>
    <span>because fuck you, that’s why</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Even though Sam could probably discern it, he just wanted to hear it from the pretty boy’s mouth. “How about this. We spar again, swords and armour, no high frequency. You win and I leave.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want you to leave,” it slips out from Jack’s lips. A crease between his eyebrows grows right after.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then what do you want?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack breaks eye contact. “Let’s just fucking fight and then we’ll figure it out.”</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Raiden watches in disdain as Sam procures his exoskeletal suit in a rumpled mess from his garbage bag full of garbage belongings, and shakes the pieces of armour out into a pile on the floor. Sam wiggles his eyebrows, hands tentatively at the waist of his sweatpants. Raiden just rolls his eyes and heads for the room behind the kitchen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam beats him back to the gym; it gives Raiden a bit of a shock seeing once again the off-white armour he associated with an enemy. His hand flicks towards his sword in its scabbard, taking steps with a lightness that belied his fully-metal cyborg body. Sam’s eyes are still wandering. “This is going to feel so good,” he mutters. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe for me</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Raiden thinks, not offering Sam even a second to ready himself-- he just whips his sword out and charges. In the split second between that first step and the first impact, Sam has time to smirk at him, not even slightly inclined to </span>
  <em>
    <span>touching</span>
  </em>
  <span> Murasama’s handle, and sweep his foot up and towards Raiden’s dominant hand, knocking his blade aside from his head. Sam goes for another kick, but Raiden parries it with one of his own. “Come now, Blondie, you’ll have to try better than that if you want me to leave.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raiden affords him one second too long for conversation. He has to move faster, Sam’s blocking every single one of his strikes without even using his sword-- but how fast before Sam physically can’t keep up? Sam’s mouthing something, saying something under his breath. Probably just another taunt. Another </span>
  <em>
    <span>menino bonito</span>
  </em>
  <span> or what-have-you. But Raiden is so occupied trying to read Sam’s lips that he’s too distracted to react to a crimson blade screaming towards his open flank. It’s a clean hit, Raiden knows, but no blood. If the high frequency was on, he’d be in pieces right now. Sam’s turned this match on a dime now that Murasama is drawn, bending Raiden’s brain inside out to try and read which strikes are his feints and which are real; and all he can focus on is the little HF switch on the handle of his sword-- and not pressing it. It’s now Raiden can appreciate just how brilliant a swordsman Sam is, once he gets him to commit to a move that positions his arms well away from vital points.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next few steps must have happened faster than humanly possible-- when Raiden opens his eyes next, he’s looking at pieces of red metal dancing in the air and a flourish of Sam’s blood. Raiden’s eyelids smash together again, open again, but no picture’s coming through. It’s a haze of daylight and liquid. The latter part of Murasama’s blade clatters on the floor. Sam groans and grabs his chin. “Sam,” Raiden gasps. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s blood slipping through the cracks between Sam’s fingers. He sinks to the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What can I,” Raiden tosses his sword aside, “What should I do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam snickers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t have to forgive me. You can just leave.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sam only grins wider.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll do anything. I’m sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There it is,” Sam says. Every single one of their sparring matches ended with Sam’s blood on the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you want?” Raiden ventures.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, what do </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> want?” Sam echoes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sam, I just hurt you,” Jack looks positively pathetic. “I, I broke your sword. I should be asking you what you want.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, if you hurt me and broke my sword, can you maybe put that big cybernetically-enhanced brain to work and take a wild guess as to what I want?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I'm pretty sure the Patriots didn't touch my brain.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It shows.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine,” Jack exhales, produces his cell phone. Sam tries to peek over his shoulder to look at his contacts list, but Jack spins away. He presses call and puts it on speakerphone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Raiden?” The fellow on the other end speaks with a bit of a German accent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dok, I just broke a sword.” He tries not to sound on the verge of tears. His eyes flick to the pieces of Murasama, mingling on the ground with Sam’s blood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, it’s certainly not out of the question to find a replacement. Aren’t you off duty?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack sighs, rethinks his words. “I mean I just broke a really important sword. The red one. When can I drop it off?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m going to be out of the office until the end of the month, and we’re booked solid until then.” Jack sighs even deeper. “But I </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> have a contact based in southern California who I could query. If you’re willing to either ship it there or make the trip out yourself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jack turns to look for Sam’s approval. “Pretty Boy, I am not just going to FedEx my Murasama across the country where it could get lost or stolen. You know what I want?” He asks. “A vacation.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll do it,” Jack says. “We’ll head out there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll let Genevieve know you called, then,” Dok responds. “But if you don’t mind me asking--”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dok clears his throat. “-- Never mind. I must have imagined it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright, thanks, Dok,” Jack’s thumb hovers over the </span>
  <em>
    <span>hang up</span>
  </em>
  <span> button.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Take care until then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-- Wait, one second.” Jack gives Sam a side-eye, lowers his voice and steps past the mirror-door into the hallway. He doesn’t think Sam hears, “-- do you know anything about, like, cyborg genitalia?” He grins so wide he tugs the wound across his chin apart a little further.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>lets go to the beach? beach?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. summer rain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>if you've got a few bucks to spare consider putting it towards my friend's paypal via my tumblr bio. i've had to support maddie and their family out of my own bank account for the whole summer while they found a job and maddie's had a rough life especially the past few months. they're saving up to take their kids to the zoo and by god if anyone deserves it it's them.<br/>https://4tsloid.tumblr.com/</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Listen, Sunny,” Raiden explains, over the Codec to the young lady who was rapidly drawing conclusions. “Sam and I have a professional working relationship.”</p><p>“Yeah, a professional working relationship where he stares at your ass all the time,” Sunny says.</p><p>“Language.”</p><p>“Don’t act like I’ve never heard the word ‘ass’ in my life.”</p><p>“Would your father want you talking like that to me?”</p><p>“Well, I think Snake would just kind of laugh at you right now.”</p><p>“I meant your other father.”</p><p>“You know I’ve never known my real biological father.”</p><p>“Sonnetica. Juliet. Emmerich.” Raiden would’ve said it through his teeth.</p><p>“Pfft. Not like he can hear me,” Sunny says, in reference to the latter member of the Emmerich clan, “this line is encrypted. If a tree falls in the forest.” If a child says <em> fuck </em> and her parents aren’t around to hear it, did it really happen? Sunny Emmerich really is a small blessing in his shitshow of a life, but what Raiden wouldn’t give to have her be that silent little girl running around the Nomad again sometimes. </p><p>“I think you and him might get along,” Raiden says, glancing at the next most talkative person in his life, with one of his legs slung over the seat of his chair and one of those stupid pillows people buy at airport duty free shops fastened around his neck. He’s even got an issue of <em> Playboy </em> open, the plastic wrapping crumpled up on the floor next to him. “You and Sam. He has a motorcycle.”</p><p>“Ooh, what make and-or model?”</p><p>“I dunno. You’ll have to ask him.”</p><p>“What do you mean, you dunno? You were riding it!”</p><p>“Back then I was more concerned with getting to you than how I got there.”</p><p>“You say ‘back then’ like it was years ago. It was only like, five months.”</p><p>“Having a conversation with you is like trying to debate all of MENSA at once. But like in the best way possible.”</p><p>“Having a conversation with <em> you </em> is like watching a panel of middle-aged men write a high school romance. But like in the worst way possible.” Raiden can't stop the smile that comes. Sunny gives him a sigh. “Your ETA is in three and a half hours. I hope you can have a nice, long, romantic walk along the beach with your new boyfriend when you get there.”</p><p>“Sunny, for the last time, he’s not my--”</p><p>“Talk to you later.” She hangs up.</p><p>It’s too hot when they land in Los Angeles; people are wearing shorts in October. Steam pours out through the vents in Raiden’s shoulders, leaving his shirtsleeves wet in the cyborg equivalent of pit stains. His silicone skin doesn’t accommodate sweat, but the stripe along his spine is squelching before long. But Sam seems right at home from the second he reaches terra firma, though, what with his tan skin and aviator shades and his awful Hawaiian shirt with the top three buttons undone. As they step into the hotel lobby, Raiden tries to do up at least one more of those buttons. </p><p>“Easy on the cleavage, Miss Parton.”</p><p>“Prude,” Sam replies. One more button couldn’t hide the fact that half his chest was metal. Raiden’s mind boggles at how few fucks Sam gives about waving around his cyborg enhancements in public. Maybe he thought there were chicks who were into that kind of stuff. But there’s people who are into everything under the sun. They drag their minimal luggage further up the queue. Raiden’s breath catches in his throat as Sam tries to book the two of them a double room, but Sunny pings him on the Codec. </p><p>“What now?” Raiden asks.</p><p>It takes a second for her to reply. “Dad heard everything. I got chewed out.” Raiden guffaws out loud, earning him some strange looks from some others in the lobby.</p><p>The concierge gives them a room with two beds anyways. That’s alright, though, it’s wiggle room in case Jack has another of his temper tantrums. Before the end of the day, Sam and Jack take a rental car to the address Doktor provided, where Genevieve supposedly worked. The auto body shop they roll up to turns out to be a front for a little high-frequency specialist outfitter, which the woman in question ran. They drop off the case which held the broken pieces of Murasama, and in return Jack receives a single package about the size of a shoebox. Back in the car, Jack opens the box, but the lid obscures whatever is inside to Sam’s prying eyes. Jack wrinkles his nose, and calls Doktor on the Codec for a while, while Sam watches the crease between Jack’s brows deepen further and further as the call goes on.</p><p>Jack gets back out of the car to ask Genevieve something, but foolishly leaves behind the mysterious package in the driver’s seat. Sam waits till Jack heads deeper into the auto shop, then opens the box to reveal-- a part of a prim, pink pussy, placed among packing peanuts and sealed in shrink wrap. Sam licks his lips, takes it out to inspect it. It would look so, <em> so </em> tasty only if it had that natural moistness to it. Only if it were between Jack’s legs. There was even a pretty little clit-- to please a pretty Pretty Boy. On the other, not-so-pretty side, myriad wires and sensors stuck out of it, and a chute where one’s cock was to fit inside, too. Sam puts it back in the box and closes it just as Jack appears again.</p><p>“You weren’t looking, were you,” Jack asks, before he can open the door.</p><p>“Nnnn--” Sam starts to lie, but redirects himself, “what if I did?”</p><p>Jack tosses the box in the back seat. “I’m trying to keep it a surprise. So I’d just call you a party pooper or something.”</p><p>“Well, somebody else is in for a surprise tonight.” Sam slips his hand onto the back of Jack’s arm.</p><p>“So you really <em> do </em> have a shit fetish.”</p><p>“Excuse you, I think you’d quite enjoy participating in my fetishes.” And so on, et cetera, all the way back to the hotel.</p>
<hr/><p>Sam doesn’t see Jack for the rest of the afternoon. He’s locked himself in the bathroom with the shoebox, probably trying to install it by himself. Maybe he had to call his doctor friend for help-- while half naked with his pretty pink new pussy out. Where would the fluids and slick come from? Would it be extracted from his diet and drink? Maybe Sam should go out and get some red fruit for Ice Princess to snack on. The more of his pretty pink margarita he sips, the more Sam’s mind wanders between the beautiful boy’s legs and the more questions manifest that he’d like to find the answers to. Perhaps Jack took it for a spin by himself, y’know, just to test it out, that’s why he’s taking so long. Imagine if the old German guy was watching in.</p><p><em> Ah, I’m thinking too hard, </em> Sam thinks to himself, glancing down at his own crotch. <em> And there are children here </em>. Children and their families splashing in the surf, that is, soaking up the last few rays of the evening sun, sitting on beach towels with cartoon characters on them. In the meantime, Sam spent a good while in the hotel gym, after Pretty Boy kept distracting him from actually working out, what with his amateur hour sparring matches and his bewildering philosophical insight. Sam reaches over to get a sip of water now, but dumps it all over his face by accident. At this, he hears a little snort from not too far away. It’s Jack; even though he’d consider himself a master of stealth, he’d given away his position. Sam sits up. “Pretty Boy!” He tips his shades off his eyes, looking him over head to toe, almost offended. Jack has on another stuffy collared shirt and a pair of hideous khaki shorts. He’s holding a can of cheap beer to complete the Barbeque Dad ensemble. Sam might have gone through the other four stages of grief if he’d been wearing socks and sandals on top of it all. “Are you telling me you didn’t pack a swimsuit?”</p><p>“I don’t own one.”</p><p>“Unfortunate for all of us,” Sam remarks. “How’s your five-percent alcohol fermented dough water?”</p><p>“You’re the reason why I still drink.” He shotguns a gulp, probably for show. “Did you,” Jack traces the outline of Sam’s speedo with his finger in the air, seeming slightly more subdued now, “not pack any other clothes?”</p><p>“<em> Bonito </em>, I brought every piece of clothes I own.” Every single article from the garbage bag.</p><p>“And I take it you still had room for lube.”</p><p>“What are you trying to say, ehn?”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“It’s funny you should mention my clothes, or,” Sam gestures down the remains of his abs with a metallic arm, “lack thereof.”</p><p>“You’re talking out your ass.”</p><p>Sam takes off his shades, slips one of the arms behind his speedo. “So, could you perhaps be suggesting you’re ready to try out your new toy?”</p><p>“What on earth are you talking about.”</p><p>“Don’t play stupid with me, Pretty Boy, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The new,” the grin on Jack’s face blows his cover again. “The--” Sam glances at the water slide, the children splashing in the nearby shallows, the family having dinner at the next cabana over. “--Your special delivery from earlier. Have you installed it yet?”</p><p>“Installed what, Sam.”</p><p>He forms a vee with his fingers and wiggles his tongue through it. “-- That’s probably worse than if I’d just said <em> vagània </em>. Never mind.”</p><p>Jack snickers. “You just want to go down on me right here and right now? With all these little kids watching?” He steps up to where Sam’s sitting and lowers himself down onto the lounge chair. “We’re gonna get sand in it anyways.”</p><p>“Well, you did a terrible job of keeping it a secre--” The upholstery beneath them rips and the frame buckles under their combined weight, and the two end up sitting shocked on the sandy ground. They’re getting more attention and more awkward stares for this than if Sam had given all those kids an impromptu vocabulary lesson. An exasperated lifeguard stares on.</p><p>“You can put the chair on my tab,” Jack tells her.</p>
<hr/><p>Sam wants to head back inside hand in hand, but Raiden insists it’s too hot to hold hands. He shakes off Sam’s hand around his wrist, then his elbow, but settles for Sam’s first two fingers wrapped around his last two fingers. Not like anyone can see, though, they’re already waiting at the elevator by the time they’ve made up their minds. The elevator ride up is a blur of Sam’s lips and the scratch of his stupid stubble and his grabby hands, one metal and one flesh. Raiden wipes a smear of Sam’s saliva off his mouth in the nick of time before the doors open again. The peeling wallpaper and the electric orange carpet in the hallway seem that much more grating, as the walk to their hotel room seems that much longer. That’s funny. Raiden always thought that his first kiss with Sam was going to be more dramatic (as the man himself is wont to be), more tender and magical, maybe after Sam had finally found the key to his frozen, aching heart after a round of passionate sex. But it was over, just like that. They’d parted for air at least once, or at least Raiden thought. Maybe it counted as several kisses. Maybe Raiden should just stop thinking about it.</p><p>His spine is still prickling. “You were sporting a boner the whole way up here,” he says, voice hushed, noting the towel tied around Sam’s waist.</p><p>“Clever observation,” he ties the knot there a little tighter. “Why else would we be here?”</p><p>Raiden tugs on the single gold chain around Sam’s neck with one finger. He whispers, “so you can show me what makes your dick so spectacular that makes two women want to go down on you at once.”</p><p>“Oh, you will see, Pretty Boy. Have patience.”</p><p>Raiden whips out the key card to their hotel room and slides it in the reader. It doesn’t register. He takes it out and jams it in again. Still nothing. He rams it in and out and in and out, trying to press the little magnetic strip right against the reader, but to no avail. Sam’s hand stops his. He takes the card and slides it in once, gently, and the little indicator light clicks green.</p><p>“I’ve got the magic touch,” Sam remarks. He holds the door open for his princess.</p><p>Raiden wishes he didn’t scowl at him. “I’m going to strangle you.”</p><p>“Is that a threat?” Raiden also wishes he could shrug off his shirt and toss his towel on the back of the nearest chair as easily as Sam did, or twack the waistband of a speedo at him before slipping it off and chucking it at him. Sam’s sunglasses clatter to the floor, and he stoops over to pick them up, making sure Raiden bore witness to his bare ass. There’s old bruises on it from last time, and a new one where Sam fell out of his beach chair. Raiden makes a mental note to add a few more marks on this property before the end of the night.</p><p>“Are you not going to get undressed?” Sam asks, like being naked is the most natural thing in the world for him. He leans against the desk, gives his cock a stroke, first with his flesh hand, then with his metal hand. </p><p>Raiden steps up to him, presses his clothed ass against the head of Sam’s dick. “Come get it.”</p><p>“Your Highness,” Sam turns him around by his shoulder and dips his head to Raiden’s collar for some reason. </p><p>“What on earth are you doing.”</p><p>When Sam tips his face back up to meet him. “I’ve been told I’m very good with my mouth.” Tugs at the fabric with his teeth to try and maneuver it out from around a button propped over his lip. The only thing Sam accomplishes is getting his drool all over Raiden’s very expensive shirt.</p><p>“Not that good.” Raiden reaches around Sam to undo the rest of his buttons by hand. “Hurry it up.”</p><p>Raiden discards his shirt and unbuckles his belt, sliding it out through the loops and giving Sam’s thigh a half-hearted whip with the end. But he wants to make sure that Sam’s the one who undoes that button, and on the bed. Raiden’s finger finds Sam’s chain again before that happens, and so he drags him forwards, backwards, there. “I am going to be so glad that these awful khaki shorts are off you.”</p><p>“Kind of rich for someone who wears denim ribbons across their crotch,” Raiden says, but then, “you’re gonna be more than glad,” he promises. Seeing the smug smirk slide right off Sam’s face is priceless when he sees beneath those plain puritan pants; as there lie the pretty pair of black panties he couldn’t even touch in his dreams. Sam’s jaw goes slack. “Whad’ya think.”</p><p>“Jack,” Sam’s hands lavish Raiden’s legs, casting the shorts off to the wayside. He kisses the tops of Jack’s thighs, then the spot right above the centre of the waistband. “This is perfect.” And then, “I knew you were a freak.” He moves to gather the panties’ crotch in his teeth, to see what beautiful device lay underneath <em> that </em>, but Raiden pushes back on Sam’s forehead.</p><p>“You’re getting on here with me,” Jack’s whisper is harsh, patting the spot in bed beside him.</p><p>“Of course, Your Highness.”</p><p>“And cut the Your Highness bullshit. We’ve been through this.” Sam snickers, clambering up the quilts so his jaw could land in Jack’s grasp. Kissing him again was a good start. And oh, his waist fit perfectly in Sam’s hands. The texture of Jack’s skin differed between the line down the middle of his back and everywhere elsewhere, Sam could feel it in the minute, fine hairs that still remained, and the intensity of his moans when touched there. But Jack’s skin was all peaches and cream, like purest vanilla and sugar, not to mention that new little cupcake between his thighs that Sam wanted to eat for every meal. Jack grinds himself on Sam’s thigh. He’s taunting him, Sam can tell, with that wetness, that warmth. Now Jack is just mocking him, taking a handful of Sam’s cock and pumping. “Now <em> this </em> is going inside me.”</p><p>“We’ll get there soon enough.” Sam maneuvers himself towards that cute pair of panties, tugging them just far enough down for him to dip his head to taste a little bit of the slick soiling Jack’s crotch.</p><p>“Hey,” Jack protests. Ooh, the little clit reveals its rosy head. Sam traces the area around it with his tongue. “That’s not what I me--<em> ohh! </em>” Sam wishes he could see the eyes roll back into his head before the cutest little scowl crosses Jack’s face. He bends his legs behind Sam’s neck and wraps his lips around the head of the cock in front of him.</p><p>“Ah, so this is what you meant by strangling--” He’s similarly cut off by his own moan. Jack’s mouth is already occupied with the head of Sam’s cock, tongue exploring beneath the foreskin. Jerks it with his hand while sucking on one of the balls. Sam gets his revenge by nudging Jack’s budding clit with his lips. He moans vibrations through Sam’s cock, halfway in his mouth, which sends the two into a feedback loop. Sam doesn’t relent, mouthing over each of Jack’s folds, edging dangerously close to the clit, then the slit, but not close enough.</p><p>“For the love of--” as soon as Jack speaks up, his clitoris suddenly exists again; Sam giving it a brush over with the heel of his hand. Jack gasps. “You son of a bitch, would you stop-- <em> ahhn </em> ,” Sam does it again, “for <em> fuck’s </em> sake, Sam, I swear on my-- ngh!--”</p><p>Sam laughs the whole way down, but stops in his tracks when Jack rams a spit-slicked finger into his ass. That finger probes and feels around for the bundle of nerves inside. “<em> Bonito </em>,” Sam says, biting his tongue when Jack brushes past, then presses down on his prostate. “Use your words.”</p><p>“Less talking, more fucking,” Jack insists.</p><p>“Oh, no, no, no,” Sam shakes his head, nuzzling his way further into Jack’s new pussy. “We will be communicating while we dance. As part of a healthy relationship.” Finally taps his tongue on the needy clit and gets Jack to moan again. “Learn each other’s boundaries, things like that.” Jack takes Sam’s dick deep into his mouth. He takes that as a sign that he doesn’t want to talk anymore. Sam had best follow his own advice. “Pretty Boy, you are taking my cock so well,” he says, getting a little breathless in a way he hoped sounded sexy. Jack pulls off his member before he can even finish his sentence.</p><p>“Shut up. Please. Sam. I’m begging you.”</p><p>“That didn’t sound like a very convincing beg.”</p><p>Jack growls, and smacks one of Sam’s ass cheeks just shy of bruising it. Sam yelps. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes. The sensation, whatever it may be, surges straight to his cock. “I knew it,” Jack says, “I fucking knew you were gonna try and make me beg for--” Just in time, Sam slides his tongue right in Jack’s slit and presses a circle around the clit with his thumb. Jack lets out a multisyllabic moan, ending with “<em> Sam! </em>”</p><p>“This is just another competition between us, hm,” Sam remarks, to nobody in particular. “Are you perhaps too proud to beg, <em> belo </em>?”</p><p>“God damn it, Sam, just make me cum.”</p><p>“That sounds like a whiny little princess throwing a temper tantrum.” Wipes the flat of his tongue right over the hole, making Jack’s legs tighten around Sam’s head. But as quickly as the pressure appeared, it disappears, as Jack disentangles himself from beneath Sam.</p><p>He clambers some distance away from him on all fours. “Get your cock inside me. Do <em> something </em>.”</p><p>“Getting warmer.” Sam reaches over to him, catches Jack by a lovely ass cheek and teases a fingertip against the precious entrance. Jack bucks backwards to meet it. He takes it away, but opts to try again with two fingers. Jack takes them deeply with no regard for preparation. <em> So he did go for a test drive </em> , Sam thinks to himself. Jack spends some time feeling up Sam’s callused fingers on his inner walls. <em> Does he know how loud he’s moaning..? </em></p><p>“Please,” Jack says, the edge to his voice dissipating. “Sam.”</p><p>Sam scratches his chin with his other hand. “Decisions, decisions.” Pretends to ponder his choices while he twists his fingers inside. Jack tries to thrust back on them, but Sam whips his digits back out; steadies his hips, then creeps over on his knees closer to him. The bed springs <em> squonk </em> beneath them.</p><p>“Your cock is literally right there and you decide the best use of your time is <em> not </em> having it inside me,” Jack says. Trying to own him with facts and logic, Sam presumes. “I’m disappointed. You wanna know how soft and warm I am inside.”</p><p>“You present an interesting case.”</p><p>“If my case is so goddamn interesting, Rodrigues, just <em> fuck me </em>!” Jack twists over with the deadly speed he’d use to manipulate a sword through a man’s body and clamps his legs around Sam’s waist.</p><p>Sam’s eyebrows raise. “You should’ve just said so in the first place,” he says, sinking his cock, at long last, into the pussy that was just as cute as Jack himself. It feels like the heavens open up when Sam sees the whites of Jack’s eyes for a split second. But only for a split second, then he returns to his snappy self.</p><p>“Don’t tell me you’re gonna get me to beg you to move, too.”</p><p>“Now that you mention it.” Sam smirks. Jack bares his teeth and tries to move it himself, but Sam holds his hips fast. “Am I a bad boy because I don’t let you do what you want? Am I gonna get a spanking?”</p><p>“You can spank me with your ballsack,” Jack growls. “You’re not gonna be able to bust your fucking nut without moving.”</p><p>“You’d be surprised. I’m very close already.”</p><p>“But you’d be closer if you’d just move your ass.”</p><p>“I am not joking, Blondie, I haven’t done cardio since World Marshall.”</p><p>Jack repositions one of his legs over Sam’s shoulder. “It would be mutually beneficial.”</p><p>“Ah, you see, that is the thing. I can get myself off any day of the week. Any place, any time. And you are saying all this under the assumption I just want to get myself off. Oh, no,” Sam shakes his head. “I did not get you undressed and into bed just so I could use you as an orifice. I want to hear <em> you </em> beg and scream and shout my name. I want you to make pretty faces for me and cum so hard you can’t walk the next day.”</p><p>“Because getting <em> me </em> off gets <em> you </em> off.” Jack recites. “That just proves my point. My pleasure is a catalyst for yours and that’s why you should be moving your cock inside me. Do you understand?”</p><p>“Are you saying I mean to discount <em> your </em> pleasure in all this? That I only get you off because it gets me off?”</p><p>Jack puts the heels of his hands in his eyes. “I can’t believe we’re hosting Debate Club while your dick is in my pussy. You gotta be fucking kidding me.”</p><p>“Well… I am doing one of those things. And I’m certainly not kidding you.”</p><p>“I think you have to be actually <em> moving </em> your dick for it to qualify as-- <em> fuck! </em> ” Sam ever-so-stealthily moves his left thumb between Jack’s legs, headed for the clit once again like a heat-seeking missile, and with the subtlest continued movement and contact with the rosy bud, he was able to prod the pretty boy in a better direction. “Ngh-- Sam, move, <em> hah </em>, inside-- please!”</p><p><em> This is when the real show starts </em> , Sam thinks, slamming his hips into Blondie’s and fighting the urge to smother him in kisses when the boy turns the same shade as a strawberry margarita. He’s trying not to breathe too hard, trying to keep his ears open for every <em> yes yes yes yes YES </em> ; but every time Sam slows down (lest the slap of flesh on synthetic flesh drown out Jack’s cries), he’s urged to go faster, harder, <em> make it hurt </em>. And so Sam’s princess gets his wish this time, and grows all the more beautiful for it, his head thrashing on the pillow, tears in his eyes while Sam steps on the gas, no, floors it, spins out in a gush of burning rubber. His vision goes white, then hazy. The pussy does a number on his overstimulated cock, seeming to suck up every drop of Sam’s output while Jack howls. </p><p>Everything hurts. Everything’s damp. A combination of the two, actually, it just occurs to Sam that Raiden’s claws had scored myriad marks all the way up his shoulders, back, triceps. Some may or may not be bleeding. Sam doesn’t give a fuck. He just crashes down right next to Raiden, and his pussy, his partner, his pretty princess.</p><p>“Did I really just,” Raiden clears his throat, “scream that loud?” There’s probably a family with children above them who’s having their bedtime right now.</p><p>“Mmh,” Sam grunts, head in afterglow mode, “pretty Pretty Boy, pretty princess Pretty Boy.”</p><p>“You did <em> not </em> just call me a princess again.”</p><p>Sam laughs for half a beat. “I say it because it is true,” not really meaning it at first. “You have an animal companion in Wolfie, after all. And you have pretty hair and expensive clothes--”</p><p>“Shut up.” Raiden moves to stuff his fingers in Sam’s mouth, but he rolls his head out of the way.</p><p>“You live up high in a tower by yourself.” The more Sam thought about it, the more sense it made. “And even though you throw so many temper tantrums, I always give you exactly what you want.”</p><p>“You’re just talking out your ass now.”</p><p>“You know what you also have?” Sam asks. “A knight in shining armour.” He raises his eyebrows.</p><p>“I wonder who that could be.” The momentary look of defeat on Sam’s face earns him another genuine, unfettered smile from Raiden. But Raiden was adamant he was no princess, and a princess was not he. Princesses were born having the world served to them in a great silver spoon. And Raiden was born under the feet of that same world. Sam slides himself up Raiden’s body. “It’s damn tough being a princess, then.”</p><p>“Not so tough when I just gave you the orgasm of a lifetime,” Sam murmurs, cupping Jack’s jaw, thumbing over the seam between his real and synthetic skin. Raiden’s response is predictable. He bares his teeth. </p><p>“No need to jack yourself off like that. You’re not that special.”</p><p>“Ah, but why would I want to jack off,” Sam says, “when I can have Jack <em> on </em>my cock?” </p><p>“You’re so fucking full of yourself.”</p><p>Sam’s smirk grows wider. “Then would you rather be the one full of me again?” He cackles.</p><p>“I swear to god, Sam, I’m going to strangle you.” Raiden rolls the two of them over and pins him to the bed, forearm pressed over his throat, stopping Sam’s laugh short. Sam didn’t think he was serious, so this is a bit of a surprise. “You know what? I like you better when you’re trying to make me cum. I’d want to fuck you all the time if every other word that came out of your mouth wasn’t absolute bullshit.”</p><p>Sam can tell he says it (at least partially) in jest from his grin and the fact that he removes his forearm from over his throat. The rush of air and the relief from the sudden, crushing pain is like a miniature orgasm in and of itself, even before Raiden’s hands move to stroke Sam’s cock again. </p><p>He snickers; reaches for Raiden’s hand once again, teases it back to his neck. “That’s great, <em> bonito </em>, because there are so many things I still want to do with you. That hopefully also involves making you cum.” </p><p>The two make eye contact for just a moment. Raiden is pensive. The rhythm of his stroke falters. “Are you sure,” he whispers.</p><p>“I trust you,” Sam says. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll give the signal like we said the other day. And you know I can disarm anybody trying to choke me, even if they’re three hundred and ninety-two pounds of solid metal.”</p><p>“Hey, that’s three hundred forty-seven without the armour,” Raiden retorts, some of the tension dissipating once again. Sam catches a hint of his smile as Raiden turns back down to stroke him. He gets gooseflesh on his thighs and all up and down his arms once the hands are removed from his cock, returning as twin depressions into the mattress on either side. Raiden drags his gaping pussy slowly over Sam’s member, such that the wet lips tease all the way up the underside, leaving a trail of the synthetic essence and stopping right with the tip pressed to the entrance. They hadn’t bothered with preparation further than that, since last round left Raiden dripping anyways. “And you’re hard again,” Raiden glances back up at Sam, “slut.”</p><p>Sam smirks, but it doesn’t stay for long. As Raiden’s hips descend, so does his hand, his palm pressing right over Sam’s windpipe. The breath is knocked out of Raiden’s lungs on penetration. He can’t say the same for Sam. Raiden’s tempted to let off the pressure, but Sam senses this, bringing both of his hands to lock the claws in their rightful place. His face is bright red; smirking darkly. Each of Raiden’s nails lines up with the gouges from that one sparring match they tried to strangle one another. Seems like it happened a century ago. At least like this Sam can’t say any more stupid bullshit. Raiden lets up, then impales himself once again, just for the satisfaction of Sam filling him up so completely, pushing aside his mechanical innards. It wouldn’t have felt half as satisfying to just let Sam fuck his asshole again.</p><p>“Seems like this pussy,” a wet, lovely sound as Raiden eases further up on Sam’s cock for the sixth time, maybe. Sam’s eyes are glazed over. He’s on another planet. “... was a worthwhile investment.” Raiden crashes down, watching Sam’s face shift, then looking for where his hands are. Sam’s trying to thrust back up, but Raiden’s not so sure about that. “If only just for your stupid dick. I thought they only made those in pornos and fairy tales.” Up. “It feels thicker once it’s inside.” Down. “Fuck… fuck.”</p><p>Raiden sucks in a breath like he’s the one being deprived of oxygen, slides up and down one more time, then three times, then a dozen more. When Sam catches onto the rhythm, something about the curve of his cock or the trajectory of his thrust catches Raiden deep inside and makes him want to explode. Sam’s face is grey and sweat runs in rivulets off his temples. He couldn’t thrust fast enough if he tried, couldn’t make a witty enough comeback to stop Raiden from screaming out, “fuck, <em> ahn </em>, Sam, I’m yours, I’m only yours, you can c-cut another fucking hole in me and fuck me till I’m-- fuck-- fucking bleeding out on the ground!” </p><p>Raiden digs both his hands into Sam’s shoulders now, the life flooding back into his face just in time for the two to cum in the same breath. Their foreheads crash together. It’s Raiden’s turn to flush tomato-red now, though, as exhaustion seeps into him like never before, even in his fully-cyborg body. He wordlessly rolls off Sam to the side, but Sam can’t help but fall in to hold him, although it was partially because Raiden was so heavy that everything in bed gravitated towards him. He’s an immense, attractive force, a bowling ball on a trampoline.</p><p>They’re spooning now. “What’s the matter, now.” Sam asks, or rather, states.</p><p>“It’s nothing.” Maybe if Raiden didn’t bring up the fact that he just rambled on about how great Sam’s dick was for a full minute, then Sam wouldn’t either.</p><p>“You didn’t strangle me to death.”</p><p>“Despite my better judgement.”</p><p>“That’s the only way I’d want to go,” Sam chuckles. “Except maybe next time use your thighs. And besides, you’d never get railed like this again if you killed me.” </p><p>The land line phone rings on the bedside table. Raiden picks up. It’s concierge, informing him that they’d have to kick him out if room four-seventeen got any more noise complaints. </p><p>Raiden hangs up. “That’s our cue to wrap it up for the night.”</p><p>“Ohoho, <em> somebody </em>was moaning like a little whore.” </p><p>Sam sneaks a kiss on his princess’ neck. “That reminds me,” Raiden remarks, turns over in bed, and closes his teeth right over where his claws had dug into Sam’s neck. “I didn’t give you any hickeys. That’s gotta change.”</p><p>“Pretty Boy, you’ve left me hickeys and a half. Shame I couldn’t give you some,” Sam muses, lamenting Jack’s silicone facsimile skin. “Your body was made to be adored.”</p><p>“You’re not exactly right,” Raiden says, midway through another long kiss on Sam’s neck. “Almost everything about it was designed to be efficient at killing in one way or another.”</p><p>“If that were the case, then they wouldn’t have made your ass this fat,” Sam says, giving Raiden’s a squeeze. The synthetic muscle hardly gives.</p><p>Raiden rolls his eyes. “It lowers my centre of gravity.”</p><p>“Then why is your waist so small?”</p><p>“That’s to increase range of movement in my spine.”</p><p>“Then explain those delicious long legs of yours.”</p><p>“You’re kidding,” Raiden says. “Longer legs equals a greater kicking radius. Equals a longer stride when I run. They did the math. This is as long as they could physically make them without me tripping over them.” A beat. “What if they weren’t, though.”</p><p>“What are you getting at, exactly?”</p><p>“What if I didn’t look like a pretty little fleshlight,” Raiden says. “With light up eyes and a complimentary vibrating sword. What if I was just a brain floating around in a tin can? Would you even bother with me in that case?”</p><p>Sam hesitates. “Ah,” he starts. Nothing follows it.</p><p>“Should I give you five to seven business days to consider your answer?”</p><p>“No.” The smirk on Sam’s face fades. “I like a challenge. And you challenge all of me just by being in my life.”</p><p>“<em> You’re </em> a challenge,” Raiden deflects.</p><p>“Pretty Boy,” Sam says. “No matter your appearance, everything you say and do… resonates with me. I knew from the moment you told me your sword was a ‘tool of justice’.” He puts air quotes around Raiden’s catchphrase. “You heard what Wolfy recorded on the day you slew Armstrong. You made me question myself and everything I’d given up on. In fact, I’d say that I fell in love with you the day we fought in the badlands, on the moment you ran me through.”</p><p>It takes a second for Raiden to compute. “You’d only met me in person twice before that, you moron.”</p><p>Sam laughs. “Maybe you’re right. That is a bit of a stretch. But the only thing I know for real--” he bites his lip. “-- I wanted my hands all over you from the first time our eyes met.”</p><p>“That is somehow the least surprising thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”</p><p>“But that isn’t the case, <em> bonito </em>. I’ve decided I don’t want that anymore.”</p><p>“Wait,” Raiden interjects, but Sam’s next quip blows right through him.</p><p>“I would take a bullet for you,” kisses Raiden right over the barcode on his forehead, “Or in our case, a thousand slashes from your choice of HF weapon. I want to die exactly one day before you do, so I never have to live a day without you.”</p><p>That last sentence hits Raiden a little different. Was Sam really ripping out his own heart and presenting it to the man who’d once left him to die in the badlands? “You’re,” Raiden starts, but doesn’t finish. Sam rolls off him and to the side.</p><p>“Somebody I used to love once told me that.” he muses, then chuckles. “I guess he really didn’t live a day without me.”</p><p>“Did he die?”</p><p>“I killed him.” Sam says it like a weather report. “Everybody I’ve ever loved I either had to kill or watch die.”</p><p>A beat of silence. Raiden speaks again, “if you don’t want to go into it, I won’t press you.”</p><p>“I was waiting for you to press me, though.”</p><p>“I’m serious, Sam.”</p><p>“He was the same man who took my father’s life. He ditched me after the casino just so he could go back to the dojo and kill everyone there.”</p><p>Raiden swallows to fill in the space. “Must have been a close fight. Between him and your dad. Master and apprentice kind of thing.”</p><p>“There was no fight. My old man was out after he tore his ACL. He was dragged out of his office by the scruff and got his throat slit right in front of me.”</p><p>“That’s low.”</p><p>“No kidding.”</p><p>“Sam.” It’s a gamble, but Raiden moves to bury his face in the crook of Sam’s neck. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“You’ve got nothing to apologize for, Blondie.”</p><p>“You deserve so much better than this,” Raiden mutters. “Better than me. You’ve been so good to me. Too good. Better than I deserve.”</p><p>“Well, Jack, if I get to spend the rest of my life with a sad wreck like you,” Sam says, wrapping his flesh arm around Raiden, “then maybe you deserve a piece of shit asshole like me.” He is torrential, one word away from the black clouds opening up in all their fury and might. But a storm to him might be Sam’s summer rain after the drought.</p><p>Raiden leaves it at that. He takes a long deep breath into Sam’s neck and falls asleep.</p>
<hr/><p>It’s the longest Sam’s slept in for a while, and there’s no hide or hair of the hideous dreams that plague his subconscious headspace. He remembers it was about Pretty Boy, though, since it was a really good dream, but about what exactly..? Sam glances down his body, at his morning wood, then into the mirror just across from the bed. <em> Imagine fucking him back home </em> , Sam thinks to himself, <em> get a full 360 </em> - <em> degree view of us </em>. Jack is absent from bed, but he’s reading one of his dictionary-sized novels while sitting in a chair across the room, naked save for a blood-spotted bed sheet and that pair of panties from last night.</p><p>Sam stretches, stands, feels over the scratches and bruises Jack gave him last night, then saunters over to where his pretty princess waits. “Hm, I’m surprised you can still sit after that.” </p><p>He doesn’t even get his arms around Jack before he pushes his face back. “Your breath stinks. Brush your teeth and I’ll consider it.” His voice sounds like he’d been gargling sandpaper. Figures, since he screamed for all last night.</p><p>“Heh, you’re not allowed to play hard to get anymore, Pretty Boy,” Sam says, as he backs away. “Last night you were the one begging for my dick.”</p><p>“Is that your proudest accomplishment?”</p><p>“Is it hard to do?”</p><p>Jack surpasses daggers and stares an entire arsenal at Sam, who almost chokes on toothpaste while laughing to himself in the bathroom. When he returns, though, Sam notices upon closer observation that a cord extends from the wall to where Jack sits. “I don’t see why you couldn’t have just strangled me with this.” He reaches out a hand to inspect it, but Jack bats it away.</p><p>“It’s for recharging my fuel cells,” Jack says, saving his page and tugging a handful of Sam’s hair down towards him for a kiss.</p><p>“I’ll bet you needed it,” Sam says, in between breaths. “After last night.” Jack pursues Sam’s lips again and again. “What, no snappy comeback? No <em> you ain’t that special </em>?”</p><p>“No, you’re a freak,” Jack’s voice is low, then mutters something like <em> animal, sexy beast, </em> under his breath while they stumble back to bed. They don’t even make it back to the bed with the mirror-- at least not for the first round; they just crash and burn in the pristine, untouched one beside it because that’s only as far as Jack’s cord will reach. Jack keeps his own hand, or a pillow, or Sam’s shoulder nearby the whole time-- something to bite into, something to muffle the screaming and moaning. <em> Forget about me </em> , Sam thinks, <em> you’re the one who needs a gag </em>.</p><p>“Jack, you know,” Sam’s sentence meanders while the two stare at the ceiling, basking in the afterglow once again, “your catchphrase.”</p><p>While they were at it, Jack’s cord knocked over the chair he was sitting in earlier, sending his book to the floor and the bookmark dislodged from its page.  Sam figures it’ll take a while before Jack notices or cares. “About my sword being a tool of justice?”</p><p>“No no no. The other one.”</p><p>“Time to let Jack rip?”</p><p>“The <em> other </em>other one.”</p><p>Jack blanks. “Remind me.”</p><p>Sam turns to him, one eyebrow raised. “Are you saying you don’t keep track of your own catchphrases?”</p><p>“Are you going to meta-analyze them?”</p><p>“What’s the thing you say about lightning and rain?”</p><p>“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”</p><p>“Pretty Boy, I don’t know half the time what <em> you </em> are ever talking about.” Sam shakes his head. “You say all the time that, <em> hrngh, I am lightning, I am the rain transformed </em>,” he says, in a mockery of Jack’s mockery of Solid Snake. “It’s your cool, edgy, personal affirmation.”</p><p>“What about it?”</p><p>“If you are lightning, the rain transformed, what does that make me?”</p><p>“It makes you a moron, that’s what.”</p><p>“I was thinking that I need to have half of the catchphrase.” </p><p>Jack sits up. “What makes you think you have any right to half of my catchphrases?”</p><p>“You are lightning, the rain transformed. I am chaos, the eye of the storm.” Raiden tries not to groan, tries not to acknowledge it with a reaction, but an eye roll gives him away. It seems to satisfy Sam, who grins ear-to-ear and winks. “You like? It even rhymes.”</p><p>“Just because of that, I’m never going to say it again.” Sam laughs, and whaps Jack on the wrist with the back of his metal hand. “You know when you said you’d take a bullet for me?”</p><p>“Eh?”</p><p>“Last night. Or was that just an afterglow thing? Or an alcohol thing?”</p><p>“Oh, I remember saying it.” Sam says. “Why ask?”</p><p>“Were you serious? How far do you want to go?” Jack asks. He doesn’t give Sam room to answer. “Please don’t say you want to get married.” Sam’s smile perhaps gives away his response. “Are you gonna tell me you want to get married? To me?” Jack mutters, “after the first one went so fan-fucking-tastically. I’ve got a kid and his mom living halfway across the world and here I am, fucking some… asshole dude with...” </p><p>“Hey, I’m good with children.”</p><p>“You wanted to fuck me on the beach in front of all those kids last night. I’m not letting you within fifty feet of my kid.”</p><p>“I could talk about motorcycles with Sunshine.”</p><p>“Yeah, but Sunny’s not a normal kid.”</p><p>“Well, neither is your son, I’m sure.”</p><p>“Sam, I,” Sam knows he’s pushed Jack in a sour direction from his audible swallow, “I want John to be raised with the sole intent of being normal.”</p><p>“Every kid is crazy,” Sam says. “The problem is keeping it as you grow up.”</p><p>“Do <em> you </em> have any kids?”</p><p>“Not that I know of.”</p><p>“Are <em> you </em> gonna tell me how to raise my child?”</p><p>“If you were raising him, you’d be with him.” Jack grits his teeth, enamel on metal. “I’m just saying, Jack, I would love to meet your family someday. Seeing as how I have none.”</p><p>“I’d have to take it up with them.”</p><p>“Are you perhaps not ready to have that kind of conversation with them?”</p><p>“No, easy. Just introduce them to the guy I’ve been sleeping with behind their backs.”</p><p>“So I <em> am </em> just a lay?”</p><p>“It’d be worse if I said you were more than that.”</p><p>“Well,” Sam blows a lock of his hair off his face, “this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve slept with a married man.”</p><p>“Technically not anymore. We’ve filed for divorce.”</p><p>Sam gives Jack an incredulous look. “Then if you’re separating, what’s the problem?”</p><p>“I, I dunno,” Jack avoids eye contact, “I just feel like we’re moving too fast. Like what we have is too casual.”</p><p>“People move on at different times.”</p><p>“I haven’t moved on, Sam.”</p><p>“Well,” Sam sits up and reaches over with his flesh hand, rests it on Jack’s thigh. “I’ve made it abundantly clear that I would like to spend the next while with you.”</p><p>One of Jack’s hands tries to drag Sam’s off. “Look, there’s always going to be a part of me that wants to be with Rose. No matter what.”</p><p>“That’s okay.” Sam gives Jack’s knee a squeeze. “As long as there’s also a part of you that wants to be with me, I’m always going to be with you.”</p><p>Sam watches Jack scan his face for any trace of insincerity. Surely he would know by now that Sam smiles from the left side of his mouth and sneers from the right. “That’s it?” Pretty Boy should stop wrinkling his brow like that, lest he get deep creases in between his eyes like Sam has. “You really don’t give any fucks, then.” Jack falls back on the bed again.</p><p>“I ran out of all my fucks when I saw my father die,” then Sam gives Jack’s shin a little kick, “that is, of course, except for the fucks I give to you.” He tries a knowing smirk down at him.</p><p>“We’re in a hotel room in SoCal, we’re naked, we just had sex, it’s noon, and we’re talking about my kid and my wife.” Sam falls back to Jack’s level. He sighs, rolls into Sam’s shoulder, takes another deep breath in of his smell combined with sex and the bed and everything warm and damp. “So what now?”</p><p>“When will Murasama be ready?”</p><p>“Genevieve said she’d have it done Thursday.” Puts his top lip over a sore spot on Sam’s neck. “I meant I was wondering if you wanted to do anything else today.” Sam opens his mouth, but, “besides me. Cheeky bastard.” </p><p>Jack bites. “Oh,” Sam moans, smacks his lips, tries to get his saliva flowing again. “Red fruit.”</p><p>“Makes a cyborg’s cunt taste divine?” Jack finishes. “You’re gonna have to get out of bed first, you know.”</p><p>“Are you going to stop me, <em> belo </em>?”</p><p>“I sure as hell’m gonna try,” lunges across his body, chomps down on Sam’s nipple as soon as he swings one leg off the mattress.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>and that's a wrap. that got out of hand.<br/>i decided to give all the chapters names now so that's a thing.<br/>wow were my previous chapters really that short<br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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